


My Way Is Cloudy

by queenmab_scherzo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Sam Wilson, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Minor Injuries, Past Character Death, Past Sam Wilson/Misty Knight, Post-TWS, Rhodey is basically Iron Man, Winter Soldier Riley, because i don't have any weird contracts with Sony, non-graphic mentions of torture, standard Winter Soldier-related angst, there are mutants in this AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12146847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab_scherzo/pseuds/queenmab_scherzo
Summary: In 2014, Captain Wilson recognized the Winter Soldier as his long-dead partner, Riley Reyes. In 2016, Hydra, Crossbones, and the Winter Soldier all resurface at the same time, and everything explodes in Sam's face--literally and figuratively.The UN proposes a Superhuman Registration Act. Crossbones complicates things; Misty has a decision to make; Sam and Rhodey butt heads. Meanwhile, Riley rants about another Winter Soldier in Siberia.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my amazing, sweet, helpful, creative, and talented artist, [sammywilsonposts](https://sammywilsonposts.tumblr.com/), who made a terrific playlist for this fic. [You can listen to it here on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dottietheanon/playlist/20E7KuNPxrlf9R1NLtemm4). The playlist is best listened to in order. The first 9 songs correspond to the chapters of the fic.
> 
> Also thanks to [lisainthesky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lisainthesky/pseuds/lisainthesky) for beta-reading and generally talking me through all this STUFF.

_I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually._  
-James A. Baldwin

* * *

 

“We’ll split up.”

Sam glances over at the sound of Rhodey’s voice. “You sure?” he asks.

“We’ll cover more ground that way,” Rhodey says.

Sam agrees, but he also wants to see every square inch of this abandoned Hydra facility with his own eyes. The lobby alone is full of old files labeled “Winter Soldier” in various languages. Sam knows he can’t pore over them now, but just—it would be nice to know he’s not missing anything.

Rhodey is right, though.

“Yeah,” Sam says, adjusting his shield. “We’ll split up. Rhodey, Misty, you clear the south wing. Wanda, you’re with me.”

Rhodes unhooks a small handheld weapon from the hip of his armor. “We’ll be fine,” he says with a smile. “I made myself a new toy.”

“Looks like a gun to me,” Misty says.

“Doesn’t shoot bullets,” Rhodes explains. “It electrocutes people instead. Not quite a gun, not quite a taser.”

“Have fun with your new toy,” Sam says.

Rhodey flashes a thumbs-up, which looks even dumber in the armor.

Misty gives a lazy wave with her metal hand and follows Rhodes through a door marked “Solo Personal Autorizado.”

When they got news of questionable activity at a Hydra base in Mexico, the details were fuzzy. Something about infiltration at a national bank. Intelligence came from the Black Widow, and of course Mexico City perked his interest, so Sam would have probably checked it out anyway. Then security footage of Brock Rumlow’s ugly face popped up, and that’s easily worth the Avengers’ time. Sam was even lucky to snag some of his favorite team members. Not that he _has_ favorites, and not that he doesn’t miss having an invincible green monster around to throw at bad guys, but chemistry is chemistry, you know?

Plus, Misty and Rhodey were there for Sam when Project Insight went down. He can’t really imagine doing this without them, now.

So less than two days after the report, Sam, James Rhodes, Misty Knight, and Wanda Maximoff found themselves on a jet to Mexico City. Couple hours after sunset, they slunk out to Coyoacán. Coordinates led them to an old boarded-up stone hotel with keep-outs and warnings and _cuidados_ all around the premises.

Narrow streets border the hotel, heavily-populated on all sides. Sam had watched the club-goers and dancers and drinkers and musicians and tourists with a little jealousy and a lot of nervousness. (“We’ll keep quiet,” Misty had promised, reading his mind. “Get in, get out, no one’ll know we were ever here.”)

Sam hopes she’s right. His shield isn’t exactly low-profile, especially on foreign soil. Not to mention Rhodey’s armor.

After splitting up, Sam leads Wanda through the lobby to a narrow hallway, dark with the night and the broken, burnt-out light bulbs. Cracked frames with faded pictures hang on the walls. A sharp right turn takes them to a wall of windows, some broken, some boarded, some with a layer of dust. Sam blinks the moonlight out of his eyes.

“It must have been pretty, once,” Wanda says.

Sam peers out at a courtyard, overgrown by yellowing weeds, accented with little bursts of lush honeysuckle, morning glories, palmettos, dahlias. Vines climb up the sides of fountains and statues.

“Guess Hydra doesn’t hire gardeners,” Sam comments.

As they travel down the corridor, Sam ducks his head into every side-room, scanning quickly for relevant intel. All he finds are broken chairs and laundry and half-kitchens.

It’s like crawling into an abandoned bee-hive. Sam’s pulse starts to patter, a little bird trapped tight in a tangle of arteries. Just because he’s got the wings doesn’t mean there’s anywhere to fly. The shield is great, but he’s never a hundred percent comfortable when he’s boxed in by four walls and a ceiling.

They reach a T in the hall. They could turn right and follow the windows, where there’s moonlight and a cool springtime breeze.

“Look,” Wanda says, pointing down the shadowy corridor to the left.

Halfway down the hall, a flickering light spills onto the carpet, a perfect rectangle of strobing silver.

Sam takes a deep breath. “Fuck.”

Wanda smirks.

Even though his instinct aches for fresh air, Sam adjusts his shield again and leads the way toward the flashing lights. When he reaches the doorframe, he holds a hand up. Wanda stops and presses herself against the wall. Lifting the shield up high, Sam leans into the doorway and scans the room as quick and machine-like as possible.

It must have been a ballroom, once. One of those big spaces patrons can rent out for business events and proms and wedding receptions. Fancy cherrywood ceiling tiles soar overhead, and Sam gets a whiff of stale air and damp stone. Even in deep neglect and disrepair, its sharp corners and endless space give it a sort of Polaroid nostalgia.

It was built to be a ballroom but it feels more like an abandoned church, this big old grand scene surrounding an altar: the Chair. The same horror-show contraption Sam read about in the Winter Soldier files, the same Kevorkian shit he’s dismantled in two states and three countries since Project Insight imploded.

A bank of flatscreen monitors burns white in the darkness. Sam blinks against the contrast and even when his eyes adjust, he can’t see into the black corners of the room. Gathered around the chair are heavy computers, nests of wires, file cabinets, and upended tables. The gear casts crosshatched shadows, slender fingers of dead tree branches spread across the floor, wrapped around all the junk. Except the chair. The chair stands tall and well-lit.

The eerie spectacle flickers in and out of focus under the black-and-white video. Feels like they’re walking into a James Wan movie.

“Please let me flatten it,” Wanda says, her voice like a serrated blade.

Sam has so much appreciation for her.

And a little fear.

“Let’s check out the video,” Sam says.

“Who do you think turned it on?” Wanda asks.

Sam doesn’t know how to answer, because the obvious answer is “Hydra,” but they already know that. It’s really a matter of—well. It was probably someone trying to figure out how to use the equipment. Sick scientist type or something. That’s what Sam tells himself, just so the little blue kernel of hope in his chest doesn’t fight its way out. The little hope that one of these days, at one of these ugly scenes, Sam will find Riley, as whole and real and angry as Sam feels.

He’s never there.

Never, and Sam doesn’t want to jinx it. So he doesn’t think about it.

“Keep your ears open,” Sam says as he steps into the room.

“You know I can move things with my mind, right?”

“What if those things sneak up on you?” Sam shoots back.

“Things do not sneak up on me,” she says.

“Sounds like a challenge.”

It’s easy to fall into banter on a mission. It helps Sam focus. Running his mouth sort of mindless and sort of under his breath. Keeps his eyes free.

They cross the room, slowly at first and speeding up when they don’t step into any jump-scares.

As he approaches the bank of monitors, he begins to hear the faint sound. From far away it’s just bursts of static, but when Sam steps into the screenlight, he can make out words.

_“Доброкачественный.”_

Sam tiptoes closer to one of the monitors and tilts his head.

_“Возвращение на родину.”_

The footage is grainy, the shot panned out to encompass the whole room, but Sam can still recognize Riley on the screen. He’s seated in that vile electric chair, not moving. Not moving, except the illusion of a twitch whenever the film skips.

_“Один.”_

“What language is that?” Sam asks, not looking away from the screen. Blood pounds hot in his temples.

“Russian,” Wanda answers. Her voice echoes off the distant walls.

“You know any Russian?”

“No.”

_“Грузовой вагон.”_

“Damn.” The video-Riley looks calm and complacent. Static starts to whine over the speakers, damage taking over the film. Sam turns to a stack of papers nearby. He flips through the file folders. Russian. Russian. Spanish. Russian. German.

A fat folder full of hand-written longitudes and latitudes. Sam recognizes several at the top of the list—Bagram, Kabul, Jalalabad. Numbers that throw him back to the old Air Force days. His stomach does an ugly flip like a clumsy bird trying to take off.

Finally, he finds something in English.

_Emergency Protocol: On-field wipe and reset_

_Activation sequence may be used without electro-shock reboot for short-term purposes. In the event of glitched programming—_

“Captain?”

He tears his eyes away from the document and squints through the dark at Wanda’s silhouette. “What’s up?”

“There is a light across the hallway.”

Sam gazes at the Winter Soldier equipment, trying to develop all the negatives in a single glance.

Across the hall, Wanda’s room is much smaller. At some point, it must have been a pantry, or a kitchenette. Something service-related. The first thing Sam sees are a sink and a refrigerator missing all its doors. When he turns to face the light, there’s another bank of TV screens, all playing bursts of silver static. This side of the room is totally incongruous to the old rusty sink and stove. Computers, speakers, three keyboards, and underneath, rows upon rows of drawers, all hanging open, empty.

Sam fiddles with a crooked cabinet door. Empy. Empty. Empty.

“What was in here?” he wonders out loud.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” a harsh voice sounds over his shoulder.

Sam whirls. Instinctively, he raises his shield. Over its lip, he catches a flash of red, and then a hulking black shadow cannonballs out of the room. He looks at Wanda.

“Was that—?”

“Is this how you say _Hello_ to an old friend?” the intruder shouts from the hallway.

_Rumlow._

Sam grits his teeth and charges out of the little annex shield-first. He barrel rolls into the hall, dodges a haymaker, and watches Rumlow’s fist punch a crater into the wall next to Sam’s head.

“Look at you go, _Captain!”_ Rumlow smirks. “Giving me chills.”

Sam uppercuts his shield into Rumlow’s chin and kicks him into the opposite wall. Rumlow pulls himself up and Sam gets a better look at him: scuffed black helmet with a hand-painted skull, heavy tac gear, weapons loaded onto his torso.

With a crunching noise, Rumlow reveals some kind of massive saw-like weapon on his armored gloves.

“You got upgrades,” Sam comments.

Rumlow nods at the shield. “You didn’t.” He darts forward, pulling one arm back for a massive bladed attack—and then jerks backward and slams into the wall again, as if someone yanked on a rope tied around his waist.

A scarlet rope.

“No upgrades,” Sam says with a grin. “I got new friends, though.”

A red cloud surrounds one of Rumlow’s gauntlets, and his fist, seemingly of its own will, buries itself into the wall. He jerks his arm. The stone cracks, but doesn’t budge.

Sam looks at Wanda, still standing inside the doorway of the little service pantry. She’s watching Rumlow with mild interest.

“I didn’t bring handcuffs,” Wanda says. “Will that work?”

Rumlow lets out an animal growl. “I do _not_ have time for this.” With his free hand, he reaches into a pouch on his belt, pulls something out and flips a pin.

Sam raises his shield. “Wanda!”

Rumlow flings the grenade into the little kitchen and it releases a burst of gas. The air burns crimson with her magic, and Wanda’s voice rings out: “Stop him!”

“Now that she’s busy …”

Out of nowhere, Rumlow, who apparently freed himself, strikes Sam across the shoulder. Sam’s feet leave the ground. It’s a little clumsy, but he catches himself in a somersault and rolls into a boarded-up window by the courtyard.

“What are you doing here?” Sam asks, pulling himself to his feet.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Rumlow shoots back.

And then he attacks, relentless, some kind of steel shrapnel buzzsaw of hand-to-hand combat. It takes Sam by surprise, for a second. He ducks punches, dodges kicks, and rolls out of the way of those massive gauntlets. He finds his footing.

When Rumlow gets too close, Sam thrusts the shield into one arm, and the gauntlet shatters onto the ground. It’s a good move—except it turns Rumlow’s vision red. He whirls around and propels Sam through a half-broken window.

The shield clatters out of reach, and Sam lands hard on his back. He can feel his lungs collapse with the impact. Gasping, he looks up at Rumlow.

“I thought _Captain America_ would last longer in a fight,” he sneers. He raises his armored fist.

Sam braces himself.

A dark figure swoops across his vision, tackling Rumlow and hurling him into a crumbled stone statue.

Sam rolls onto his side, coughing painfully. Through watery vision, he sees Rumlow stagger to his feet and attack the newcomer. Metal flashes in the moonlight.

“Rhodey?” Sam croaks.

He crawls over to his shield and pushes himself to his feet. With a crash, the statue disappears, nothing but dust, and Sam stumbles a little. He can make out Rumlow’s skull helmet, and facing him, brown hair. A red star.

_“Riley?!”_

The figure turns, and it’s like slow motion, the way his eyes scan the courtyard and find Sam’s. It’s like slow motion as he turns out of the shadows and into the moonlight. It’s like slow motion the way Sam’s heart sputters to a stop.

Rumlow looms behind Riley, and time speeds up again twice as fast. He kicks Riley into a tree, and Sam lets out a wordless roar.

He rears back and launches his shield at Rumlow’s ugly skull.

It clangs and ricochets back to Sam, who’s already halfway back into the fight. Riley’s moving again, too, charging at Rumlow from behind. The three of them cross the courtyard in a slow, vicious dance. Feet are everywhere. Shouting everywhere.

Riley tumbles into a window, and it cracks ominously.

Rumlow cackles. “Come on, Robin! That all you got?”

Sam spins and kicks, sending Rumlow through a half-broken door. It slams open and swings wildly on its hinges. Rumlow disappears into the shadows and goes silent.

For one airtight, nightquiet moment, Sam and Riley are alone together. Standing in a moonlit courtyard, facing each other and breathing.

“Riley?”

He blinks.

“Do you remember me?” Sam asks.

“Lackland. Bagram. Kabul. New York.” He grates out the words, shaving each one off a stone block. “Sam.”

That’s all it takes, just his name, leave the rest: Sam’s name on Riley’s lips, and wings beat to life in Sam’s throat.

“What are you doing here?” Sam whispers.

Riley’s eyes narrow and flick across the courtyard. “Looking for something,” he says hoarsely. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for you.”

A high-pitched _ping._ “Sorry to break up the reunion, lovebirds.”

In the dark interior, Sam can just make out the gleam of Brock Rumlow’s grin.

Riley dives for him and yanks the door shut.

“No!” Sam springs forward. With a deafening explosion, a wave of heat throws him back. The courtyard lights up orange and bright. Sam spins around: the door stands fast, framed in orange, but overhead, on the second story, a wall of windows bursts into a wall of flames.

“Riley!”

He scrambles to his feet, still gazing at the two-story flames left behind by the explosion.

Sam activates his comm link. “Rhodes?”

Nothing.

Dead air. Not even static.

Sam’s heart beats so hard he can taste it, fire in his throat and ash on his tongue. “Rhodes!”

He waits a moment.

Still nothing.

Riley, fire, explosives, an empty starlit sky, the burnt silence of dead comms.

Sam whirls around, scanning the courtyard. “James Rhodes, I swear to God, if you don’t answer right the fuck n—”

“Sam?” the line crackles.

_“Rhodey!”_

“We saw the fire,” Rhodey’s voice says, cutting in and out. “Where are you? Where’s Wanda?”

“We—I’m okay,” Sam says. He darts to the door and pushes it open; it swings crooked on its hinges. Through flames, Sam can see an entryway and shattered windows. “I’m in the courtyard.”

“Which side?”

“Rhodey, don’t—don’t worry about me,” Sam says. He gazes numbly through the curls of gray smoke. Stares at the shards of glass and the hollow shell that was once a hotel lobby, stares through the broken windows to the street beyond. “The entrance. The street. The people.”

“On it,” Rhodey says sharply.

Sam tries to search the lobby, but he’s already choking on the thick spouts of smoke. There’s no sign of any people—survivors or otherwise. There’s no sign of—but there never is. There never is any sign.

* * *

 

“They recover any bodies, yet?”

Sam looks up at Rhodey, still in his armor—everything but the helmet. The metal plates glow in the flashing emergency lights.

“Six,” Sam says. The number tastes bitter. Six people dead, at least. Six of those innocent people who had been out clubbing and dancing and crowding the streets, having fun. Enjoying the plaza and not giving the abandoned hotel a second thought. Six people who would have gone home tonight if it weren’t for Sam getting careless and distracted.

Rhodes rubs the bridge of his nose. “I should have been there. We never should have—”

“You didn’t know.” Sam shakes his head and winces; he adjusts the ice pack on the back of his neck.

Rhodey was right to split them up, it was the smart way to go. He couldn’t have known.

“Any sign of Crossbones?” Rhodes asks.

“No,” says Sam.

“Six bodies, though?”

“Unidentified.”

“Unidentified because of the fire, or—”

“No metal arms,” Sam bites. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Rhodes has the courtesy not to answer. His lips tighten and he looks at the ground, and then across the plaza, surveying the cleanup crew and the rescue teams.

Sam ducks his head between his knees and spits onto the stone sidewalk. “I mourned him once without a body,” Sam says. “I’m not doing it again. Not without proof.”

Rhodey nods slowly. “Chasing ghosts is a full time job, Sam. Trust me.”

“I do,” Sam says.

“You’re sure it was him?” Rhodey asks for the dozenth time. “You’re sure it was Crossbones?”

“You can trust me, too, Rhodey.”

The War Machine armor shifts, and he nods. His eyes drop to the ground. Over Rhodey’s shoulder, movement catches Sam’s eye. Misty strides out of the mob, her hair dancing like fire in the strobed red emergency lights. She’s holding a thick swath of gauze to her left shoulder.

Sam looks up, winces, and adjusts his ice pack, again. “Misty—”

“Crossbones was here for a reason,” she says as a greeting.

“So were we,” Rhodey points out.

 _“We’re_ all accounted for,” she says. “Fire and rescue still hasn’t found any trace of Crossbones.” She glances at Sam. “Or the Winter Soldier.”

“They weren’t here on accident,” Rhodey adds. “Rumlow’s name hasn’t popped up since S.H.I.E.L.D. fell apart. Now all of a sudden he’s around again? That’s no coincidence.” He nods at the burnt-out remains of the hotel. “He was here for the stuff in the hotel.”

“Exactly,” Misty says darkly. “And I don’t think it had nothing to do with vacation points.”

“This place was packed with Riley’s old records,” Sam says. “Medical records, coordinates. Those videos, that chair.”

Misty nods thoughtfully. “It’s like a library on the Winter Soldier. Or it _was_ , anyway.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, gazing at the wreckage. “There’s not much left, now. And the only people missing are Crossbones and the—Riley.”

An awkward silence follows. Sam is pretty sure he knows what his friends are thinking, and he tries to prepare himself.

“Sam,” Misty begins. “We have to consider the possibility … he might be working with them again.”

“I told you,” Sam says, voice straining to stay level. “He _saved_ me. He was fighting against Crossbones, same as me.”

“Hydra might be using them both,” Misty says.

“Or Hydra might be hunting Riley down, same as us,” Sam counters.

They look at each other, at the ground, and at the crowds of emergency personnel. Eyes flashing, hair flashing, armor flashing, fire flashing.

“Alright,” Misty says, squaring her metal shoulder. “Wanda recovered some of the documents from the hotel. I’m gonna have a look. Figure this out.”

A clinking noise gets their attention. “I’m gonna help with the rescue. I’m sure all the people are safe, now, but…”

“Yeah,” Misty agrees.

Sam braces himself on the curb and rolls onto his knees, then stands up with a groan. “I’ll help too.” He tosses his leaking ice pack into a patch of grass.

“How’s your head, Cap?” Rhodey asks, side-eyeing him.

“I dunno what you’re talking about.”

They follow Misty back into the crowd. Plenty of people and no sign of the guilty one. It will be a long, bright night. Emergency lights and adrenaline and shouting as if the sun never set.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News of Mexico City hits the media.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very very veeeeery vague mentions of sexual acts in this chapter. It's after the Waffle House flashback. Definitely, definitely remains T-rated.

_ “Rose isn’t a team player. That’s the beginning and end of it. He’s just not a team player. His team knows it, and his organization knows it, and the media knows it.” _

_ “I don’t disagree with you, Jemele, but listen, is this even a team’s league anymore?” _

_ “Even Lebron had to move to Miami to get a ring.” _

_ “Maybe it’s time for Rose to move on, then. Maybe he needs a fresh start. He needs a new team, fresh faces to win over.” _

_ “So he  _ does _ need a team, that’s what you’re saying, now?” _

_ “I’m saying it could be a team of nobodies, Jemele. He needs a blank slate.” _

_ “One man can’t beat the league.” _

Sam’s not even half-invested in this tired debate anymore. Derrick Rose could have bounced in 2013 and Sam probably wouldn’t have even noticed. Honestly, who  _ would _ have noticed? Hasn’t had decent floor time since he won MVP anyway.

He keeps SportsCenter on for the background noise, these days. Not much to get excited about. Chicago’s half-assing it from ownership down, football season ended months ago, and Sam could name about two current Major League Baseball players, maybe. But he grew up with sports debate on the TV screen, so he keeps it playing. It’s no different than adjusting the thermostat. Maintaining the apartment’s climate.

Sometimes it distracts him, but today? This week? 

Please.

Wanda recovered a handful of materials from the hotel, and confiscated a few to Sam before the UN could get to them. Now, a small stack of Hydra files rests on the coffee table next to Sam’s feet. Every once in awhile, he glances at them, and wants to punch a hole through a wall, and wants to punch a hole through the Russian language.

One of the folders from Mexico City is open on top of a pillow in Sam’s lap. The one with lists and lists of coordinates. The first three pages are all Afghanistan, which Sam recognizes from his 2000s deployments, and which plainly tell a story of Riley’s earliest days of Hydra captivity. 

He knows exactly what it means, and it strips his veins like wire.

As he absently scans the page, something pops into his head. Something that sends more sparks up his spine. He shouldn’t, probably; but he can’t get it out of his head.

He wonders which of the coordinates belong to Mexico City. There was a chair and equipment in that abandoned hotel. Riley must have —

Sam knows he shouldn’t do this to himself.

But it’s not just Mexico City he’s curious about; he  _ knows _ there’s a Hydra base there, he just saw it with his own eyes. The thing he can’t get out of his head is—what if there are other Mexico locations? What about the little town where Riley was born, the one Sam can never remember because Riley always said “it’s basically Mexico City, I’m from Mexico City,” and started listing all the little suburbs with Mesoamerican names. Sam can’t remember the city, but now his stomach is writhing with the thought that those coordinates might be on this list.

He sits up straight and reaches for the laptop. Clicks the mouse to wake it up and types in his password. Types an “F” and lets the browser autofill “Facebook.”

Sam doesn’t do this too often. He’s  _ recovered, _ for fuck’s sake, he’s in a healthy place and shit. It’s been months. 

But Riley’s name also spills easily from his fingertips. Riley, whose hometown is listed on his profile. 

Six results pop up. Each of them has a little “add friend” button to the right. Sam frowns. He narrows the search to his list of friends. 

_ We couldn’t find anything for  _ **_riley reyes._ **

Sam’s heart drums against his sternum.

Air howling past his ears, the rush of wind and the sting of speed in his eyes. A flare bursting orange on his right. Disappearing into smoke and into the gravity of the night sky.

Sam shakes his head. His lungs fill with a hiss, breathing in, sucking in the faint smell of Febreze. His vision comes into focus on SportsCenter, and he unpries his fingers from the arm of the couch.

_ “As for Brooklyn, their problem isn’t lack of talent, it’s lack of focus.” _

Sam blinks at the TV, and then back at the computer screen.

This —this was bound to happen, eventually. It’s been ten years. Surely after all this time, Riley’s family would want his private life off the internet. This was bound to happen, but—but fuck, it’s still hard to look at those words,  _ we couldn’t find riley reyes, _ the same words that play on repeat in his nightmares. It was bound to happen, Sam tells himself; assures himself of the logic involved. Still, it’s another thing entirely, looking at a blank white page of text. It feels like Riley’s Facebook profile is hiding there, just out of reach, behind a white wall of HTML, like Sam should be able to try a couple passwords and uncover Riley Reyes in full color. All his dumb statuses, all his pictures, his smile, blurry selfies at soccer games, wild flowers and wild lizards, dark pictures of mix drinks in shadowy bars.

That innocuous line of text, ten years later, never changed because there’s no one to change it.  _ In a relationship. _

Sam flattens his hands across the glass of the coffee table to stop them shaking. He’s better off this way. Better off not dwelling on old photos and missing what he can’t have.

_ “Congratulations to Derek Jeter, the Captain, the hero of New York City, on announcing his retirement this afternoon.” _

Sam glances up at the TV, sighs, and looks back down at the document in his lap. Yeah, he’s better off this way. He’s got work to do.

He slides a finger down the list of coordinates and pauses on the latitude and longitude for Jalalabad. The next one on the list is close, probably a little farther west in Afghanistan. Sam’s geography is fuzzy, but those coordinates are so close to their old air field. 

Sitting up straight, he opens a new Firefox window. He selects the tab for “maps” and carefully types in the coordinates. After a second of searching, a little pin drops onto the Kunar Valley.

Right. Sam thought it might have given him a clue, but he can’t remember anything special about Kunar. He flips back to the “images” tab, which uncovers pages and pages of idyllic mountains sloping gracefully over a green valley. 

It’s a little disjunct from Sam’s memories of service.

He clicks on the general search tab.  _ Kunar. _ Three different Wikipedia pages followed by anti-ISIS headlines, drama along the Pakistan border, drone strikes, even old Taliban news. At the bottom of the search page, a headline catches Sam’s eye.

_ Tony Stark POW Camp Discovered in Kunar Valley _

Sam frowns. Taps his finger next to the Kunar Valley coordinates and glances back at the computer.  _ U.S. forces narrow down location of Tony Stark’s 2008 assassination by the Ten Rings. Last week, a unit out of Bagram Air Base traveled …  _

Sam never realized Tony Stark had died so close to his airfield.

Never realized. He squints at the coordinates. A comprehensive list of Winter Soldier deployments.

When his phone buzzes from the couch cushions, Sam almost flips the coffee table.

“Shit—fucking—shit,” he whispers, and fumbles for the phone with shaking fingers. It vibrates again. He stares at the caller ID, and his heart drums harder as he answers.

“What’s up, Rebeca?”

“Did you know?”

Sam sits up straight and plants his feet on the floor. “Know what?”

“Don’t  _ bullshit _ me, Sam Wilson, what do you  _ think _ I’m calling you for at two o’clock in the morning?”

Sam pulls his phone away from his ear to glance at the time.  _ Fuck. _ “Did you hear something about Riley?”

“Did—did I hear something? Did I hear something about my  _ brother?” _ Rebeca scoffs.  _ “Yes _ I heard something about him. The whole world hears something about him. Tell me the truth, Sam. Did you know?”

So Sam’s heart is beating against his ribs like a xylophone, his veins are barely holding in this power surge, and now his lungs are operating at like 150 percent. His whole body is about to launch into fucking space.

“Rebeca,” he says, and clears his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear. What does the whole world know?”

“Did you know he works for Hydra?”

Beat.

“What the fuck.”

“Stop playing stupid, Sam, it has been on every channel for hours!”

He digs frantically for the remote in the folds of a throw blanket.

“Rebeca, for real, I—what channel?”

“News channels, Sam!”

She’s talking to him like he’s dumb but to be honest, that’s fair. He feels pretty fucking dumb. Did he know, did he know, what happened, what did he miss, is Riley with them again, did Hydra get a hold of him again? Surely someone would have told him. He’s Captain America. Sort of. 

No, not sort of, it’s been years, Misty would kick his ass if—fuck.

He finds CNN first, only two channels away from ESPN.

_ “... ask ourselves, after the Winter Soldier’s open attack on Mexico City, what is Hydra really after?” _

Sam blinks. “Open attack …?”

_ “You’re absolutely right. With us now, Staff Sergeant Keith Mowry, who received a Purple Heart after his service in 2011. Staff Sergeant, tell us your thoughts on the astonishing news of the Winter Soldier’s true identity.” _

_ “I think it’s tragic that a member of our military would betray the United States this way. I think it’s terrible. Terrible stuff. Terrible that he would, you know, that this guy who pledged his life to our country? It’s terrible that he would join Hydra, a terrorist organization connected to all these foreign countries.” _

_ “It is terrible. Again, Reyes was listed as killed in action in late 2007, but many sources suggest that he began working for Hydra before that time. What are your thoughts?” _

_ “I’m disgusted, to be honest. Disgusted that a person—he was pararescue! He was supposed to save lives, and now—the news that he was a double agent? Disgusting.” _

“He wasn’t a  _ double agent,” _ Sam says. The words taste like napalm.

“So you knew,” Rebeca’s voice comes to him softly, like she’s very far away.

She is far away, Sam reminds himself. She lives in Florida. Miles and miles and miles, and she’s still at the same deep night hour as Sam, still losing track of sleepless time.

Rebeca says, “You knew my brother is with Hydra.”

Sam says, “He’s not with Hydra.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not  _ with _ them,” Sam says, staring blankly at the CNN scroll. “ Hydra found him. They captured him and experimented on him. They  _ forced _ him.”

“They had to.”

“Yeah, they—they what?” Sam blinks rapidly. That wasn’t the answer he expected.

“Riley is good.”

“Yeah,” Sam croaks. 

“He’s a good person,” she continues. “He wouldn’t do those terrible things. Not unless they forced him.”

Sam squeezes his eyes shut, but a tear slips past, anyway. 

Wow, that came out of nowhere.

“I know,” Sam whispers. He knows, he knows Riley is good, he knows it the same calm, easy way Rebeca just said it, but he just—he’s been feeling all alone.

“Sam?”

“I know,” he says again, and presses the heel of his hand into his eye. “He didn’t. He doesn’t work for them. They made him do those things. And he’s not—he’s  _ not _ anymore, I promise.”

“You saw him in Mexico City?”

“Yes,” he says, blinking the tears away. “Yeah, God, yeah, I saw him there.” Sam looks up at the news ticker. “And he didn’t blow up that hotel, either. I promise.”

Rebeca is quiet for a moment. Long enough for Sam to breathe the heat out of his eyes. On TV, the anchor is still talking while a slideshow displays photos in the corner. The explosion, the rescue crews, the cleanup. Some of the photos are blurry, but Sam can clearly make out his shield; Rhodey’s armor; Misty’s arm; a red glow lifting Wanda twenty feet into the air.

The newsman is still speaking.

_ “... know that Captain America and the Iron Patriot were present, but the question is, who are the other enhanced individuals with them? Are they Avengers? Are they with Hydra? Don’t we have a right to know which superpowered people are enemies and friends?” _

Sam lowers the volume, thinking about enemies and friends. “Riley was there. He saved me.”

“So where is he now?” Rebeca asks.

“What?”

“You saw him. Did he see you?”

“Yeah, we—”

“So where is Riley?” Rebeca’s voice is hard, consonants snapping through the phone line. “Is he with you?”

“No,” Sam admits. “I don’t know where he is.”

“You see my brother, and he saves you,” Rebeca says, “And what do you do for him? Nothing?”

“I’m  _ trying, _ here.”

Rebeca is quiet again. Sam thinks he can hear a dog in the background, a faint bark. He didn’t know Rebeca had a dog. Riley loved dogs. He loved all kinds of animals.

_ Loves _ all kinds of animals.

Sam is under control, now; he only lost it for a second there. He pushes the papers across the coffee table and leans his elbows on his knees. “I’ll find him, Rebeca.”

“You knew he was alive,” she says, a little softer, a little less between-the-ribs. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”

“No, I didn’t.” 

“You call me what, three times a year, and you didn’t tell me?” she demands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The thing is, Sam kind of has an answer for her. He’s always had an answer, ever since he decided not to tell her. He’s not sure if he’s proud of that. “Because I didn’t have nothing to tell. S.H.I.E.L.D. went down, and I was in the hospital, and Riley  _ disappeared. _ I didn’t know how to tell you … well. That I don’t know nothing.”

“Like now.”

Sam heaves a sigh. He stares at the rug between his feet. It has stripes. They are not red, white, and blue. “Yeah. Like now. I still don’t know nothing.”

They both go quiet, then. The phone is quiet, the apartment is just dim TV-dialogue, washed out in the background. The couch and the pillows and the light flooding from the kitchen are quiet.

“I’m looking for him,” Sam says, finally. “That’s it, you know? No aliens, no Norse gods, no Russian spies. I’m looking for Riley, and if I don’t find him—I’m looking for Hydra, too.” He adds that last bit with a bite. 

“You were looking for him in Mexico City?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, and then perks up a little. “Wait, I wanted to look up—where was Riley born, again?”

“Mexico City,” she says, and he can practically hear her shrug over the phone.

“No, I mean—wasn’t it a little town? Outside Mexico City? Like a suburb,” Sam says, pressing his knuckles against his temple. “He almost never said it, so I can’t remember.”

Rebeca hums. “San Juan Teotihuacán.”

“Right.” Sam says. He won’t forget, this time.

“My parents moved after Riley was born,” she adds. “I was born in the city.”

Sam’s eyes flick to the computer. He drags a finger across the mousepad, and the screen winks back to life, internet browser still open. Sam steels himself. “Rebeca, did you delete his Facebook?”

The phone bursts with shuffling static, then goes quiet. Sam waits it out.

Rebeca answers, finally, “I deactivated it.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “I just—I was gonna look it up. San Juan Teotihuacán.” He says it out loud to commit it to memory.

“I did it today,” Rebeca says. “Well, yesterday, now.”

Sam glances at the clock again and curses. “What happened?”

“The news channels.” Her voice is like stone. “The people on his page. Coming on and saying terrible things, about Hydra and treason, and calling him a traitor. And other things.”

Sam pulls his bottom lip between his teeth.

“I don’t need that,” Rebeca says. “Riley doesn’t need that.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “That’s the last thing he needs.”

He ought to thank her, actually. If he had logged onto Riley’s Facebook and seen a pile of nasty messages on his timeline, Sam probably would have chucked the laptop out the window.

Rebeca speaks up again. “Is he okay, though?”

The question startles Sam, and he says, “yeah,” automatically. He thinks of the way Riley kicked Brock Rumlow twenty feet through the air. Then the image burns away in an orange explosion. Sam inhales, leaning back against the couch cushions. “I think so.”

“And you?”

Sam blinks at the ceiling. “What?”

“You are doing okay?”

“Yeah,” he says without thinking about it. He blinks. He  _ hasn’t _ thought about it. Hasn’t come up. “I mean, I’m here.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Yeah.” Sam switches the phone to his other ear. “I’m just. I think I’m a pretty horrible person. You know?”

“Why?”

“Six people,” Sam says, glancing at the paperwork on his coffee table. “Six people died. Kids, just out having a good time. They died because of me.” He closes his eyes. “And all I can think about is Riley.”

Rebeca goes quiet. Sam can hear the dog again. He sits up and looks at the TV. Two news anchors sit in little boxes onscreen, arguing over Winter Soldier semantics. Sam flips the channel back to ESPN. 

West coast baseball highlights. Dodgers-Giants. The rivalry that crossed the country.

“You’re not a horrible person, Sam.”

“Thanks.”

“I think about him, too,” she says. “Still. My parents think about him.”

“I wonder if he thinks about us.”

“That’s why you’re not a horrible person, Sam,” Rebeca says. “Besides, you are Captain America.”

“Yeah,” Sam huffs a little laugh. “Yeah, that’s true.”

He’s Captain America, for sure. He doesn’t know if that makes his argument or hers.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Get some sleep.”

“I will,” he lies.

They hang up pretty quick after that. It makes Sam’s stomach squirm a little. It’s been to long since they talked, and then every time they  _ do _ talk, it lights an ache in the back of his throat. It’s not her fault. It’s just hard.

Sam and Rebeca first met when he and Riley hit stateside during their first tour, and even then, everything about her reminded him of Riley. Her accent, her smile, her hair, her attitude. At the time, it endeared her to Sam. Not that it doesn’t anymore.

But it’s hard.

Anyway, he and Riley had been friends for ages before Sam ever got to know Rebeca. After years of tech school and several months overseas and over a year of inside jokes, Riley asked Sam to visit him in Florida. It didn’t even occur to Sam to say no.

Rebeca met them at a Waffle House in a residential basin south of Sarasota, one of the parts of Florida that looks normal except the palm trees lining the sidewalks.

Riley had offered to squeeze in next to his sister, and she had immediately refused. “I don’t wanna break up the lovebirds.”

Sam almost tripped getting into his booth and toppled the pepper-shaker. 

“Um—”

The thing is, at the time, Sam and Riley weren’t  _ any _ kind of thing, they weren’t kissing or dating or even so much as hooking up. 

At the time, Sam and Riley were  _ friends _ if anyone asked,  _ wingmen _ if anyone witnessed them at work, and  _ fooling themselves _ if anyone paid close enough attention. 

They’d been joined at the hip ever since they pushed each other through their waterborne FTX at combat diver school. They’d finished PJ training, and they’d earned their maroon berets with a small group of rowdy, but well-trained airmen—Sam somewhere near the top and Riley somewhere near the bottom. Riley used to tease him about being a huge nerd, but it wasn’t the school Sam cared about. 

The truth was, once he got into the air for the first time, once he knew what it felt like to be surrounded on all sides by nothing at all? That was it, for Sam. Being in the air was like seeing the world in full-color, and whenever his feet were back on earth, everything was all grainy black and white.

Plus he didn’t sign up for all this just to be another jock fighter pilot. He signed up to save people. And when you want to save people, the Air Force sends you to school.

So yeah, Sam studied his ass off. 

(“You think of everything, Sam Wilson,” Riley had said once, lounging on a cot after a long day of PT.

“I jump out of planes for a living,” Sam had replied, sitting up on his own mattress, book open to a glossary of medical terms. “Sure don’t wanna forget nothing.”

“You’re a nerd.”

“You’re in the plane with me!”

Riley had laughed at him, the easy laugh that always caught Sam off guard, the one that sent Riley’s body tilting, tongue between his teeth. “Yeah, okay,” he had said softly. “I don’t want you to forget—when we jump out of the plane—with—oh, fuck,” he said, snapping his fingers, “what is it, what do you say, when you jump out of the plane with a shield?”

“Parachute?”

“Yeah!” Riley had been cackling, at this point. “Yeah, parachute. I need to study, maybe.”

“It’s been a long day, man,” Sam had said, chuckling.

“You can read it to me?”

“You got your own books!”

“Yeah,” Riley had said, leaning back. “But this way, I can listen to your beautiful voice, also.”)

In hindsight? Definitely fooling themselves. 

Anyway, when Rebeca said “lovebirds”, Sam had about burst into flames before he could even see a menu.

And Riley, a goofy little shit as always, had burst into giggles and thrown his arm around Sam’s neck. “You’re gonna make Sam blush,” he had joked. 

Rebeca had frowned and looked back and forth between them. “Sam, right? Sam Wilson.” She raised an eyebrow at Riley. “Isn’t he the one—?”

“Oh, Rebeca, hey, um, I’m gonna look for a menu—or—or a menu,” Riley had said, loud and throaty, waving down a waitress with extra gusto.

Needless to say, three months later, Rebeca was very happy for them when they divulged their official-lovebird-status.

Sam smiles when he thinks about it. He jokes about it, now. Tells himself he held Reyes off as long as he could. The thing is, though, they more or less started dating the minute Sam unhooked Riley’s foot from that barbed wire during BEAST week, so was he really holding him off? When they made it official, what changed, really? More blow-jobs in the showers, but not much else.

Good blow-jobs, though.

Anyway.

The clock is rolling past “late” and into “early.” Sam has seen the same highlights on SportsCenter four times, now, and he’s been staring at lists of numbers so hard he feels like Good Will Hunting. He heaves himself off the couch and crosses the room. The window’s still open but there’s not much breeze between the buildings, just the chance that a bird will fly in.

He leaves it open.

And he makes a ham sandwich, thinking maybe a full stomach will help him relax. It doesn’t, at least not for the first hour, but Sam dozes off on the couch before the sun comes up. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The UN proposes a Superhuman Registration Act. Sam and Rhodey have a healthy debate.

Takes less than a week for everything to collide mid-air.

Riley in the news. Mexico City in the news. Hydra in the news. Captain America and the Iron Patriot blowing up hotels on foreign soil.

Three days after Sam gets home from Mexico City, the UN summons the Avengers for what they call “briefing and consultation.” (Technically, they try to summon Bruce Banner and Thor, too, but when Sam sees their names on the notice, he legit laughs out loud. Cool, good luck getting your snail mail to Asgard.)

The thing is, Sam and the rest of them know full well this “briefing” won’t be brief and this UN “consultation” is really about to be a demand. Especially once they learn it’s Thunderbolt Ross in charge.

The footage of New York City is rough. The footage of Wakanda—that makes Sam’s blood boil, not least of all because Bruce Banner is still MIA. The footage of Washington D.C. is another level, with Sam’s blood already hot inside when it all hits his heart at once. And then the footage of Mexico City. It’s from across the plaza, so there’s this perfect profile view of fire and debris erupting out the hotel lobby. Sam can remember the scorch of it, how he could feel the heat even through the door, after Riley—

Sam says, “That’s enough.”

Secretary Ross eyes the remote for a moment before selecting a button. The screen winks into darkness. “The fact is,” Ross says, turning to face them, “you are a group of very talented individuals. Our country, and even the world, owes you a great debt. You have provided many people with safety and protection.”

Sam glances at Misty. Her eyes widen and she blinks pointedly. They’re thinking the same thing. There’s a “but” coming.

“But,” Secretary Ross continues, “that protection has not come without a price.” He explains, in circular pedantic jargon, that essentially, the United Nations doesn’t trust the Avengers. That, after seven years, or seventy if you argue right, international law is finally ready to label them as vigilantes. That the Avengers aren’t beneficial to the government unless the government can search them in a database and call them in any day of the week.

“After much deliberation, the United Nations has agreed upon a solution.” Secretary Ross folds his hands. “The Superhuman Registration Act.”

Pause for dramatic effect.

“Registration,” Wanda says flatly.

“May we have access to this Act?” Vision asks. “Access to its exact wording and stipulations.”

Ross smiles, pulls something out of a binder, and drops a flimsy stack of papers before them on the table.

Wanda, who is seated closest to Ross, raises an eyebrow at the scant paperwork. Maybe a dozen sheets of printer-paper bound with a paperclip. Rhodey leans across the table, beckoning with one hand; Wanda pushes the document to him. While Secretary Ross speaks, Rhodey flips through the pages.

“The Act was recommended by the General Assembly two days ago,” Ross says, “and we expect it to pass into law in a matter of days.”

Sam whistles.

Ross ignores him. “The Act states that all super-powered individuals actively using their powers must register their true names and aliases with the United Nations.”

This time, no one makes eye contact, mostly looking at the polished tabletop or the empty middle distance.

“I’m curious,” Agent Romanov says. “How is this supposed to keep people safe?”

“By keeping you accountable,” Ross says.

“So you’re just gonna make our identities public record?” Misty cuts in.

Ross folds his hands. “By keeping tabs on individuals with enhanced abilities, the UN can better hold those people accountable ... in the event of disasters like the one in Mexico City.”

“‘Those people’,” Misty mutters.

“What about keeping ‘enhanced individuals’ safe?” Sam asks.

Ross blinks at him. “From whom?”

Sam leans forward. “If the bad guys know our first name, last name, phone number, and street address, how you expect any of us to last? We can’t do our job if Hydra is knocking us out while we’re in the shower.”

“Many of your enemies already know your identities,” Ross says, and pointedly holds Sam’s gaze.

Sam bares his teeth in a half-assed smile.

“So this … document,” Rhodey cuts in, one hand hovering over the Act. “It’s not a law yet?”

“It’s a matter of days,” Ross says. “If anyone were to register themselves before the law is passed, their trust in our system would be … greatly appreciated.”

“Trust in the system,” Sam says, mock-cheerful.

Ross smiles. Probably also mocking. “I’ve given you the courtesy of a heads-up. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expected at a meeting.” He nods curtly, gathers up a pair of binders, hands them to an intern, and heads for the door.

“So once it’s a law,” Agent Romanov speaks up, “what happens to those of us who don’t register?”

Ross pauses and turns to face her. “You retire.”

Sam glances at Romanov, and then at Rhodes.

Once the door shuts behind Secretary Ross, Sam shakes his head and lets out a breath. “So uh, who’s gonna break it to him?” He looks around the table: at Wanda, who smiles; Rhodey, who doesn’t smile; at Romanov, who ducks her head.

“Break what to him?” Vision asks.

Sam blinks. “That we’re not registering.”

Romanov scratches the back of her neck, silent, apparently conflicted. Sam squints at her. He knows better. He may not know her very _well,_ but he knows better than to believe she doesn’t have an opinion just because she doesn’t spill it on the spot.

“I don’t think we got a choice, Sam,” Rhodey points out.

“Uh, _yeah,_ we got a choice,” Sam says. “Since when did the Avengers just blindly follow orders?”

“They’re not _or_ ders, Sam. It’s legis _lat_ ion.” Rhodey begins to enunciate clearly, the way he does when he’s making a point.

Sam stands up. “Okay. But why would politicians know any better than us?”

“It’s not just politicians, Sam. You saw the papers,” Rhodes says, pushing himself to his feet to face Sam. “If we argue with this—if we’re out there telling people, ‘we don’t care what you think’—that is _dangerously arrogant,_ Sam.”

“‘The papers’,” Sam scoffs. All he can think of is the Winter Soldier flooding the headlines. “You tryna tell me the press got _my_ best interests in mind?”

“No,” Romanov speaks up from her chair. “But we do. We watch out for ourselves, same as always. Signing that Act is just another way keep some control.”

“By literally giving up control.”

“Sam,” Rhodey says sharply.

“But it is not just the people in this room,” Wanda says. “It is everyone like us. Asgardians. Mutants. Villains.” She looks around the table, at each of them in turn. “This happened because of Mexico City. Because of Crossbones.” She looks at Sam. “Because of the Winter Soldier.”

Sam would hug that girl right now if she wasn’t so prickly and if she couldn’t, you know, turn him into a pile of red dust just by winking. “Exactly! If I’m here at the UN speaking for all those people, I’m not gonna hand ‘em over to Ross’s fucking international prison!”

“‘Those people’ being Hydra?” Vision clarifies. Not for the first time, Sam wonders if robots can be sarcastic.

“‘Those people,’ being Pietro and my father and the other mutants,” Wanda says harshly. “Who would certainly have something to say if they were here.”

“I believe they can also expect a call from Secretary Ross,” Vision says.

“If he can track them down,” Sam adds.

“That’s the thing, though.” A tinkling sound grabs the table’s attention. Misty’s metal fingers tapping against her glass of water. Sam, and the rest of the Avengers, turn to face her. “They’re talking about ‘super-powered individuals,’ but don’t bother to define super powers. They slapped all this down without thinking it through, and now they want us to do the same thing?”

“The difference between the people in this room and the average civilian is clear,” Vision points out.

“Yeah, but what about the differences between you and me?” Misty asks, voice hot.

Vision doesn’t have an answer for that. He just blinks at her. Frustratingly calm.

“They wanna regulate people ‘actively using powers’,” Misty goes on. “What does that mean? ‘Active’? That mean they wanna take away my prosthetic?”

“No,” Rhodey says. “Just the weapons built in.”

“Sounds like a fine line.” Misty flattens her mismatched hands across the table. “Sometimes it’s not so simple, identifying the real criminals.”

Makes Sam think of bullet-holes in hoodies and algorithms and helicarriers and weapons-manufacturing. The Kunar Valley. He glances at Rhodey. “Misty’s right. What happens when there’s a misunderstanding between us and law enforcement?”

“I thought we _were_ law enforcement,” Romanov points out.

Sam takes a breath. “Some of us are cops. Some of us are enhanced. Some of us ain’t either one.” He pauses and looks back at Rhodey. “Hell, I don’t got superpowers at all.”

“You went to Superman School,” Rhodey says, half a smile on his face. Sam smiles back. God, if they could just be Air Force buddies again, why all this—

“You have exclusive access to a certain shield,” Romanov cuts in. “Not to mention the last pair of EXO-7 wings.”

 _Not the last pair,_ Sam thinks.

“The point is,” Misty steps in before they get carried away, “it’s an invasion of privacy. And if the government wants to regulate the personal and professional lives of a select group of people, they better damn well define who those people are—or else it could turn into _everyone.”_

“We’re armed crime fighters,” Romanov speaks up again. “Doing this in the dark with masks? Makes us no better than vigilantes.”

“A good point,” Vision agrees. “We have all chosen to use unnatural abilities to fight violence with equal force.”

“Some of us do not have a _choice,”_ Wanda spits.

“Okay,” Sam says sharply, and the room goes quiet. Five faces turn to him, and he looks back at each one. “It’s been a long week. We’re not gonna settle this with everyone heated, you know?” He glances at Vision and Romanov, who look completely cool and collected. Anyway, Wanda’s heated enough for everyone, and Sam doesn’t want to find out what she can blow up when she’s pissed. “They sprang this on us on purpose, without a heads-up or nothing, no matter what Ross says. Let’s give it a day, have a look at what it says.” He turns to Rhodey. “Be reasonable.”

Rhodey tilts his head. “Lead the way.”

The Black Widow actually leaves the room first, scooping up an old Nokia and a state-of-the-art tablet and sweeping toward the door to the tune of clicking heels.

Sam and Rhodey follow her to the exit. Misty waves them away while she checks something on her phone. Wanda and Vision are glaring daggers at each other. _That’s_ not something Sam needs to witness, whether it ends up friendly or otherwise, so he holds the door open for Rhodes and ducks out quick.

Agent Romanov is already at the other end of the hall. Once they’re a safe distance from the briefing room, Rhodey rounds on Sam.

“What’s your deal, Sam?” Rhodey looks at him the way he’d look a math problem, one that’s been giving him fits for awhile. “Why don’t you want to do this, of all people?”

“What do you mean, ‘of all people’?”

“Captain America,” Rhodey states. “Captain _America_ doesn’t want to sign legislation meant to keep civilians _safe.”_

A laughs slips past Sam’s lips. They’re really doing this. He cocks his head and puts both hands on his hips. “Meant to—Rhodey. No, I don’t want to sign away my life. Do you know me at all?”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Rhodey says, sighing deeply. “ _No_ one knows you, Sam Wilson.”

“Don’t be like that, now,” Sam says. The Battle of New York, half a dozen Hydra bases, the Scarlet Witch Incident, Project Insight? _Riley?_ All that, and Rhodey is gonna pull this bullshit. “We’ve been doing this for four years, man, you know all _about_ me.”

“Yeah, sure.” Rhodey laughs the kind of laugh you can’t hold back when you’re surprised. “You were in the Air Force, you like the Bulls and Marvin Gaye and Carolina barbecue.” His shoulders rise and fall. “What do you _care_ about, Sam?”

“... I dunno, man!” Sam throws his hands up. “Marvin Gaye and Carolina barbecue! I’m not that complicated!”

“So why won’t you sign the damn papers?”

“Because it’s wrong!” Sam insists. “It’s _not that complicated.”_

For a long, rubber-band moment, Rhodey doesn’t move. Doesn’t say a word. Finally, shaking his head, he says, “I don’t think so, either.”

“What about you?” Sam asks. He tries to regulate his voice. He tries not to sound so hot and burnt up as he feels. “Why you wanna sign so bad?”

“I’ll tell you. It’s not for no boss, no secretary, no system. We’re here to protect _civilians_ , Sam,” Rhodey says. “We keep the system happy, we move up the system, we protect people in a _big way.”_

“Okay, Iron Patriot.”

Rhodey sighs. “Don’t do me that way. You know that nickname just keeps the press happy.”

“The press, or the boss?”

“Sam.”

“Just saying,” Sam says. “Who gave you the nickname, again?”

“You know who gave me the nickname.”

“Yeah. The nickname you won’t say out loud,” Sam says drily. “And you still gonna sign his paperwork?”

“From where I’m standing, it looks like everyone’s best interest.”

“Everyone’s best—! Okay. Okay.” Sam takes a deep breath. A pair of UN employees loiters at the end of the hall, wary eyes fixed on Captain America and the Iron Patriot. “Okay,” Sam says again. “We don’t need to fight, here.”

“We can sleep on it,” Rhodey says, but it sounds like he’s saying _you can sleep on it._ He steps away. Turns back for a second. “Just think about the big picture, Sam.”

“Yeah.”

So maybe Rhodey is right. Maybe they don’t know Sam very well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The UN makes a move. Sam counters.

“The triangle is so outdated,” Misty says, crossing one knee over the other. “Why is he still trying to force it?”

“Washington not complaining,” Sam says.

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t like New York,” she rolls her eyes. “I didn’t forget, don’t worry.”

“They don’t even try.”

“They’re your _hometown.”_

“Your daddy’s a Boston fan, and you’re on my case right now?”

“He grew up with them.”

“I grew up with Jordan.”

Misty shakes her head. “So are you a Wizards fan, too?”

“I am today,” Sam says, waving at the scoreboard.

He does it mostly to get a rise out of her. Sam doesn’t _really_ have ground to stand on, here, since Chicago is swirling in the toilet with all the other mediocre teams who can’t compete with Lebron, like Boston and Orlando and Charlotte. But he can still tease. Sue him, he’s in a good mood. He hasn’t been to a ball game in a long time. Like, months. And it’s been even longer since he watched with Misty Knight, so today is good.

“Do you root for the Bears, too?” Misty asks.

“Nah, come on.”

“What do you mean, ‘come on’?” Misty turns to face him. “Who’s your football team?”

“Atlanta, girl.”

Misty blinks at him, and then rolls her eyes so hard her head follows. “You’re the worst.”

“You asked.”

And that’s how it goes, for two hours. Easy banter and knees knocking together and a pair of free beers because a teenager in concessions recognized Sam and it was faster and quieter just to indulge the kid’s geekout.

It’s late in the fourth and Washington has the game in the bag when Misty clears her throat. Her eyes are fixed on the scoreboard and not on the action, which is how Sam knows it’s about to get businesslike. He takes another sip of his cheap light draft and stares, unseeing, as the Wizards ice the game with another three.

“What’s up, Detective?” he asks playfully.

Misty looks into her drink and sighs. “The UN offered me a job.”

Sam whistles. “Damn, congrats.”

“Yeah?” she says. “You’re more understanding than I expected.”

“I mean, that’s a real step up from the NYPD.”

“It is.”

Sam looks at her. He looks across the court at the benches, and up at the scoreboard. The little fluorescent lights turn to bright fuzzy flowers in his vision. “But,” he says, “you’d be working for Ross.”

“Bingo.”

Sam nods. His glazed eyes follow the motion of the jerseys: red and white and blue with a splash of orange. “Well,” he says. “Nothing wrong with climbing the ladder.”

“That’s what Rhodey said.”

Sam watches a Washington forward bank an easy 12-footer, and then watches it again when it replays on the scoreboard. “Rhodey knows?”

“It happened this morning,” she says, evading an answer, there.

Sam turns to look at her. “After all this new legislation crap? You don’t think that’s suspicious?”

“I definitely think it’s suspicious.”

What was it Rhodey said? _Keep the system happy, move up the system, protect people in a big way._

Misty sits up with a frown and pulls her phone out of her pocket. Sam can hear it vibrating.

“That’s why you shut your phone off when you ain’t on the clock,” Sam says, pulling his own phone out of his pocket and showing her the black screen.

“Never know who needs you,” Misty argues. She glances at the caller ID and says, “Speak of the devil.” She gives Sam a pointed look, and then answers the phone. “What’s up, Rhodey?”

Crap.

As she listens, her frown deepens. She stands up slowly and beckons Sam to follow. “These people gotta be kidding,” she tells the phone, then turns to Sam, mouthing, “Let’s go.”

Instinctively, Sam glances at the court. He feels gross ditching a game with two minutes on the clock, even though it hasn’t been close since the third quarter.

Misty flicks him in his shoulder and raises her eyebrows. She speaks into her cell, “Yeah, we’re on our way.”

She squeezes past his knees and starts heading for the nearest aisle, still with the phone to her ear, whispering polite “excuse mes” to the other fans. Sam follows her. He grimaces apologetically every time he kicks someone’s foot, or every time his hip bumps into someone’s head the next row up.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and a teenager squints up at him. Her eyes go completely round with the _oh-my-god-it’s-Captain-America_ look. Sam raises a finger to his lips. Not that they’re in hiding, or anything. But they don’t have time for _that_ whole scene.

The girl smiles and unlocks her phone screen. Sam ducks down the aisle; the girl’s probably gonna tweet about it. Maybe post a picture of his ass on the internet with Madison Square Garden as a backdrop.

Once they make it out of the grand stand, Misty cuts a path through the sparse crowd. A few dozen spectators are leaving early, getting drinks for the road, checking out Knicks merch, but the floodgates haven’t opened yet. Misty and Sam are able to move pretty fast. She beats him to the big glass doors, holding one open for him. He shields his eyes against the sunset, the way it lights the west-facing windows on fire.

“Rhodey’s here,” Misty says, shoving her phone in a jacket pocket.

“Rhodey’s _what?”_ Sam blinks and looks down the street. A line of taxis threads away around the block like a thick yellow seam. Breaking them up is a single black Escalade with tinted windows.

As they stride toward the street, the passenger-side window of the Cadillac rolls down, and Sam can make out Colonel Rhodes in old Air Force workout gear.

“What’s going on?” Sam calls once they’re in hearing-distance of Rhodey.

Misty answers. “Crossbones turned up.”

“Get in the car,” Rhodes raises his voice over the New York traffic. “They’re asking for us at the UN.”

“Where’s Rumlow?” Sam asks.

“The UN.”

Sam lets out a huff of air. He opens the front door for Misty, but she shakes her head. “I’m gonna run by the station. Grab my shit. See if they heard anything here.”

“You sure?” Sam asks.

Rhodes leans toward them. “We gotta move, y’all.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Misty assures them, and she raises an arm for a cab. “I won’t be long,” she adds. “I’ll grab a cruiser.”

“Stay safe,” Sam says, and slides in next to Rhodes. The SUV must be something unmarked, something official. Rhodey flips a switch overhead and emergency lights turn on. They pull out into traffic as the siren whines to life.

“They arrest him?” Sam asks.

“Who?”

The fuck you mean who. “Rumlow.”

“No.”

“So what’s he doing at the UN?”

“They hired him.”

They howl out of Pennsylvania Plaza, lights wailing overhead, sirens carving out a hole in Sam’s throat. His shoulder knocks into the door when Rhodey takes the turn onto 6th a little too sharp, but he barely notices.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says, “They what?”

“The Superhuman Registration Act,” Rhodey says, sharp and military about it. “He signed.”

Sam shifts in his seat so he can see Rhodey better. “Is that a joke?”

“Hundred percent serious.”

“So this is a Super _villain_ Registration Act?”

“Sam.”

“Are they just gonna let Norman Osborn out of Attica if he gives them an autograph?”

Rhodey takes another just-this-side-of-reckless turn and roars down 36th. “There’s no proof Rumlow actually worked for Hydra, remember.”

“No _proof?!”_ Sam cries. “He arrested us!”

“SHIELD’s orders.”

“He was head of the STRIKE team!”

“Speculation.”

“How do they think Misty’s arm got blown off?”

“He was in that building when the helicarrier crashed, same as her.”

Sam flops back in his seat. “So he just … works for the UN, now?”

“Trust me, I don’t like it either,” Rhodes admits. “All I know is they called us in for info.”

The drive to the UN Plaza takes half its usual time, tops. With the lights and sirens screaming, Rhodey can weave around traffic pretty easily, and their hulking monster SUV gets even the most stubborn Manhattan drivers to make a path.

As Rhodey wheels through the parking deck, Sam tries to get everything straight. Hydra’s back. Of course Hydra’s back. Sam’s met people who can read minds and teleport and crawl up walls. There’s a bulletproof black man running around Harlem and the Hulk shot himself into space.

And now Hydra’s back. Nothing’s a surprise, anymore.

Rhodey puts the car in park with a clunk. “Secretary Ross needs all hands on deck.”

“All hands on deck.”

“With Crossbones involved, we need everyone in shape, ready to perform duties.”

“Duties.”

“Come on, Sam,” he says. “You know things are getting out of hand.”

“Out of _hand?”_

“Are you a parrot or a falcon?”

“Ross seem to think I’m some kinda trained circus chicken,” Sam says.

“Gimme a break, Sam.”

“Give _me_ a break!” Sam shoots back. “‘I’m going through a little _deja vu,_ okay?” He scowls pointedly, as if he could telepathically link Rhodes to the memories of Project Insight.

“If _Captain America_ doesn’t want to miss out on new intel,” Rhodes says, pointing the car keys at Sam, “then he probably shouldn’t fuck off to a basketball game without no phone.”

“It’s in my pocket,” Sam says defensively.

“Wizards-Knicks, though?” Rhodey gives him his best Deeply Disappointed Air Force Colonel glare.

“Hey, Beal is on fire, man.”

Rhodes doesn’t answer—pointedly—and he hops out the driver’s-side door without looking at Sam.

Sam pulls himself out of the car, rolling his eyes while Rhodey can’t see. “You parked over the line,” he says lightly.

“Don’t change the subject.”

Ignoring Rhodey’s scowl, Sam stuffs both hands in his pockets and leads the way to the bank of glass doors. He’s only been to the UN Headquarters twice, including yesterday. (The first time, Sam had only recently gotten the shield. It had been about three days after Steve Rogers said good-bye in the middle of the night and disappeared. Then the war criminal in question didn’t even show up. Sam wasn’t surprised, but apparently everyone else expected a demigod to bounce out of Asgardian prison and come through for a trial in Turtle Bay.)

The point is, Sam doesn’t really know his way around, but he fakes it okay, and Rhodey lets him.

They stride down the hall toward their briefing room.

“They gonna ask us to sign, again?” Sam asks lightly.

“If you haven’t yet.”

Well, if that’s not an answer. “Okay,” Sam bites. “Who all signed?”

“Will the list change your mind?”

“Tell me who’s signed, Rhodey.”

“Vision registered himself. So did Romanov.” He pauses as Sam opens a door for him; they look at each other. “So did I.”

“Alright,” Sam says. He follows Rhodey down the hall and listens as the door slams shut behind them. “Alright, alright. I hear you.”

“You hear me?” Rhodey asks. “So you’ll sign?”

“No Wanda, yet?”

Rhodey takes a deep breath. “No Wanda. _Yet.”_

Sam snorts. “She ain’t coming around, man. She’s probably telling the rest of the mutants now. What do you think _they’ll_ have to say about putting themselves on a government list?”

They come to a stop outside the same room from yesterday, where Ross introduced the legislation to them for the first time. They seemed to get here really fast. There’s so much Sam still wants to say to Rhodey, but he sifts through the noise in his brain and comes up with one last question.

“And Misty?” Sam keeps his voice low. “She sign?”

Rhodes gives him a narrow-eyed look. “You were just with her.”

“Yeah, and we were enjoying our time _not talking about the job.”_

Rhodes props his hands on his hips. “No,” he says. “Misty hasn’t signed.”

Sam lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“What?” Rhodes asks, a hint of a smile on his lips. “You surprised she’s taking your side?”

Sam shakes his head. “It ain’t my side. She’s got her own reasons.”

“Lucky you,” Rhodey says, not unkindly.

“She’s a ... useful ally.”

“That what they calling it these days?” Rhodes says lightly.

Sam shoots him a withering look—but a warm one. They’re both smiling now. “Easy, now.”

“I’m just saying,” Rhodey shoves him lightly on the shoulder. “I bet she’d be real flattered to hear you call her a _useful ally.”_

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. “That didn’t last, alright?”

“Too bad.”

“You know how it is. Something about a crazy ex-boyfriend.”

“Hers or yours?”

A sharp bark of laughter escapes Sam’s lips. He lowers his head. Misty, Luke, Danny, Riley, everyone—now Sam can’t even force a smile. Damn. And it felt so good, for a second there, teasing Rhodey, laughing together. “Either way,” Sam says, still studying Rhodey’s shoes. “I wouldn’t expect her to sign.”

“What about you?”

Sam looks up, shoulders slumped. “I can’t, Rhodey.”

“If Rumlow signed, we’re in for some deep shit,” Rhodes confides. “We need you, Sam.”

Sam shakes his head. “If Rumlow signed, this registration act has even bigger problems than I thought.”

“Is this about Riley?” He says it bluntly. Like he’s been wanting to say it all along.

“It’s about all of us.”

“He’s not the guy you left in Afghanistan,” Rhodey says, voice gentle, a blanket over Sam’s knees. “He’s not that person.”

Yeah, yeah, Sam knows that song and dance. Not the same guy, not your wingman, not the person you loved. “What if it was Stark?”

“Sam.” Rhodey stiffens.

“I’m serious,” he insists. “What if it was Tony Stark out there? Captured. Interrogated. Used. _Tortured.”_

“It was!” Rhodey barks. “It was, alright?! That’s exactly what they did to him. You gotta rub it in my face? What’s your point?”

“What if you could get him back?” Sam says it plain, lays it out there like a half-decent poker hand and hopes.

Rhodey blinks, and Sam hopes. His hand might not be so bad.

“What if you could get Stark back?” Sam asks, softer this time. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

Rhodey’s eyes flutter, and then his face goes rigid. “I can’t,” he says. “Doesn’t matter what I’d do. I can’t have him back.”

“I wish you could,” Sam says earnestly. “I wish you could, man.”

He feels a little low for bringing it up, now. A little.

Rhodes drops his voice. “You’re Captain America,” he growls. “It’s your job to uphold the law.”

“I dunno about Captain America,” Sam sighs, resigned. “But Sam _Wilson_ doesn’t give a shit about biased laws.”

“You can’t just not care about the law, Sam.”

“You asked what I care about,” Sam says, eyes searching. “I care about you. That doesn’t change.” He takes a breath. “I care about Misty. Luke. The Maximoffs. And yeah, I care about Riley.”

“Wherever he is.”

Sam inclines his head. “I care about _people._ And that includes the people who can’t sign this legislation without putting themselves at risk.”

The door opens, revealing Ross and half of the Avengers. The legal half.

“Look who it is,” Secretary Ross says brightly. “Is the Captain here to register himself?”

“I’m here to listen,” Sam says, carefully neutral.

Ross raises an eyebrow and steps aside. Rhodey gives Sam a long, watchful look, and then leads the way into the room.

Rhodey takes a seat. Sam does not.

“We were just discussing the newest addition to our Superhuman Task Force,” Ross says, standing at the head of the table, opposite Sam.

“Oh, we got a name, now?” Sam says lightly.

Ross lifts his chin. “There is no ‘we’, Wilson. Not yet.”

Vision’s eyes follow the speakers like a ping-pong game. Agent Romanov keeps her eyes trained on the table top.

Sam doesn’t argue. He can feel a wry smile curl his lips. “Talk to me about this _new addition.”_

“I’ve already informed the rest of the room,” Ross says. “But for those of you who have just arrived, let me be brief. Brock Rumlow came to headquarters early this morning and turned himself in. He admitted to working for SHIELD, but had no knowledge of Hydra’s involvement. After Project Insight and the ensuing slander, he chose not to take his identity public. Until now.”

“And you believe him,” Sam says flatly.

“He personally came to our offices and confessed his misdemeanors,” Ross says. “He registered his identity as Crossbones and made his abilities and affiliations public. We have no reason not to believe him.”

Sam nods, and looks around the room. “So where is he now?”

“On an assignment.”

Agent Romanov speaks up then, staring intently at Ross. “What assignment couldn’t wait for us?”

“We’ve given him clearance to hunt Hydra’s super soldier.”

Sam’s bones turn to lead. “You know where he is?”

“I’m sorry?” Ross tilts his head.

“The Winter Soldier,” Sam prompts. “What do you know that you’re not telling us?”

Ross doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he leafs through a stack of papers, pulls out a handful, and tosses them to the middle of the table. They fan across the polished wood like wingfeathers.

“Rumlow’s statement.” Ross folds his hands behind his back. “As a former agent of SHIELD’s STRIKE team, Rumlow was able to share key intelligence regarding the Winter Soldier, locations, and possible prototypes.”

Rhodey frowns. “Prototypes?”

“Once he registered, my offices agreed that Brock Rumlow was the perfect person to spearhead the Winter Soldier search.”

“Brock Rumlow is a criminal,” Sam says.

“So were you.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that _day.”_ Sam folds his arms over his chest and smiles grimly. “When I was on the run, thanks to Hydra. Do I gotta remind you that I took them down two years ago?” he asks. “While Rumlow was busy, uh, _working for them.”_

“Do I have to remind _you_ that you blew up a commercial block in Mexico City last week?” Ross counters. “You’re lucky we called you in, at all.”

“Lucky?” Sam barks an incredulous laugh. “I’m the lucky one?”

“We decided not to investigate you for that disaster,” Ross goes on. “Should we rethink that decision, Airman?”

“Alright, alright,” Sam nods. And keeps nodding, and cracks his jaw, and bites his lip so he doesn’t say something stupid. Yeah, it’s cool, he knows he’s not a real Captain. That’s cool, that’s fine. “So why _did_ you call me in, Secretary?”

“For a signature.”

More paperwork lands in the middle of the table, and you can almost hear a thud, like a hammer on concrete. A list of signatures with several blank spaces left free.

Sam stares at it. The muscles in his neck feel all bunched up, like metal springs with no release.

“You want me to sign up to work with Rumlow?”

“Not with him,” Ross clarifies. “His mission would remain separate.”

“His mission.”

“To subdue the Winter Soldier,” Ross explains. “With whatever force necessary.”

Sam laughs again, one bitter, humorless syllable. “No thanks.”

“Sam—”

He waves Rhodey off. “I ain’t carried a gun since I retired,” he says, sidling toward the exit. “And I don’t work for you.”

“Mark my words, Wilson,” Ross calls. “If you walk out that door without registering your identity as Captain America, then you give up that identity.”

Sam looks at each of his teammates—former teammates—all around the table. His eyes finally land on Ross. “No offense, Secretary,” he says. “But a piece of paper is not what makes me Captain America. Whether you like it or not.”

 _Steve Rogers made me Captain America,_ he thinks drily, but he doesn’t say that part. Just charges out of the room without looking back. Heart thumping, breath shallow. He wonders if he just signed his own arrest warrant, much less retirement papers.

“Sam.”

Someone grabs his arm and swings him around and just about gets an elbow to the face.

“Whoa, man, it’s me.”

“You can’t change my mind, Rhodes.”

“I’m not trying to,” Rhodey says, both hands held up, placating. “I just don’t want you to get yourself killed.”

“I can take care of myself,” Sam says sharply. “Still got the shield. At least until Ross sends a SWAT team to pry it out my arms.”

“You can’t—”

“It’s too late, man.” Sam doesn’t have time for this. He knows exactly where Hydra’s super soldier is, and he’s probably the only person in the world who knows. He backs down the hall, moving quick and careful, keeping his eye on Rhodey. “I’m not changing my mind.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find Riley before Crossbones does.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam searches for Riley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though this chapter might be confusing or misleading, I'm very sorry to report that Sam cannot actually talk to birds in this AU. You know. Writerly bullshit.

Sam doesn’t Google Teotihuacán before he gets on the plane. Doesn’t even think about it, he just knows Riley must be here. Must be near Mexico City, somewhere safe and familiar. Sam has a feeling.

He also has intel from the Black Widow, which involves footage from several security cameras on the northeast side of Mexico City, and which traces a direct line toward the town where Riley was born.

“Are you sure I’m allowed to see this?” Sam had asked dubiously.

Agent Romanov had shrugged. “I’ll tell them I thought you’d registered.”

Sam had hung up the call without questioning her further.

As an Air Force vet, it wasn’t hard to find a last-minute one-way flight. As Captain America, it wasn’t hard to check an inconspicuous suitcase that happened to have his shield and his wings inside. Then Sam spent four hours doodling on napkins, listening to music, reading scandalous Winter Soldier articles, and telling himself to stop reading scandalous Winter Soldier articles.

Anyway, one thing he _didn’t_ do was Google his destination.

So it’s not till after he gets through security and straps on his wings and spirals up over the Valley of Mexico that he realizes where he’s going.

“This is where the pyramids are,” he says, out loud, to no one in particular, since he’s high enough in the air that only birds could hear.

He’s not sure who built them, but he can see the ancient Central American ruins looming on the horizon before he can even see the city. Fucking Shakespearian shit.

It only takes half an hour for Sam to clear the first three addresses. He’s got a possible list of safehouses based on geography and real estate and all, and he only finds rats and bugs in the first three. Not the kind Hydra hires.

When Sam swoops onto the rooftop of the fourth complex, he’s getting antsy. If he’s honest, it’s nerves, and maybe a voice in the back of his head going _you’re wrong_ and _Riley’s not here;_ but his nerves always manifest themselves in adrenaline.

He slinks to the edge of the roof and peers straight down. Six stories of brick and stone, six stories of iron fire escapes trickling down the wall like oil. He’s leaning out into empty space when a pigeon flaps past his ears and he almost breaks his neck twisting to the side.

“In a hurry?” Sam asks drily.

With a loud purr, the pigeon lights on the rail of the balcony below.

“Yeah,” Sam answers, the way people answer to their cats even though they don’t know what the cat wants. “Yeah, me too.”

The pigeon fluffs up, drops onto the floor of the balcony, and then takes off again. Sam follows her clumsy flight pattern until she disappears around the corner of the building.

“Bye,” he says dully. Then he glances at the balcony. He thinks about it, looks up at the pyramids—a pair of golden moons rising in between the cityscape. He looks at the balcony again and frowns.

When he jumps down, he finds the window propped open by a fat roll of newspaper. His heart is a frantic bird inside his ribcage.

Sam hops into the apartment, sneaking as much as he can sneak in an EXO-7 suit and carrying a shield. At first glance, this building is like the last three: quiet and creaky; dinged-up wood; rusty metalwork. Sam wrinkles his nose at the stench of stale pee and mildew and that weird damp smell you get when you leave your laundry in the washer too long.

As he looks around, Sam notices signs of life. A cloud of dust motes swirls in the light of the broken windows. The refrigerator isn’t running, but there’s a stack of non-perishables piled on top. He tests the faucet. The water runs, and the little bird flutters against his sternum. Next to the sink, another newspaper sits open, stained and a little wrinkled in one corner. There’s a huge picture splashed across the front page of Sam and Rhodey with flames in the background.

Sam adjusts his shield so he can maneuver better.

Next to the fridge, Sam finds a stone wall with little bits of paper taped in a clumsy collage. They’re like home-made post-it notes. Many of them are in Cyrillic, and even more are in Spanish. Sam runs his hand across them, smoothing the little pieces of paper like scales. One says “Falcon” in English. One says “Riley.”

On an exhale, Sam spins slowly, as if on an axis, as if in orbit, always, around—

“Riley,” he breathes.

When he sees him—god, he’s nothing like the Riley in his dreams. He’s not grinning, not flying, not mounted against the unblemished blue of a heat-steamed sky, not ranting in Spanish. It’s not like Sam’s nightmares either, neither of them falling, no fiery comet plummeting toward the earth, always just a hand out of reach—

He certainly doesn’t look like the Hydra assassin who shot Sam in the gut a year-and-a-half ago.

He looks _tired._

Tired and small and hard, like an arrowhead carved out of volcanic rock. It’s strange to look at him like this, shoulders hunched, wearing a baseball cap and a sweatshirt with the hood up. Jeans, worn white around the ankles. What Hydra operative wears fucking jeans?

But it’s Riley, for sure. His unmistakeable hooded eyes and sharp jawline. There’s a new scar over his left eye, a sharp white line that splits his eyebrow in two. Sam’s not sure how new it is. From a week ago, a year ago, ten years ago. But Riley is here anyway, all of him in one piece, even with the scars.

What a miracle. Both of them have been blown up and shot and dropped out of the sky more times than Sam can count, but here they are. In the same room, breathing the same dust of sunlight.

Riley’s lips part, but he doesn’t speak. He just stares at Sam.

“Riley,” Sam says, and the name strains in his throat. “Riley, I—you’re okay.”

Riley’s reaction is small; if Sam weren’t desperate for any kind of response, he wouldn’t even notice the way Riley clenches his metal fist. The way his eyes narrow.

“I mean—are you okay?” Sam asks.

“Yes.” Riley’s fingers twitch.

Sam follows the movement and wonders how many weapons Riley is hiding, right now. “Do you remember me?” Fucking deja vu.

“You’re Sam.”

Sam takes a step forward. Immediately, Riley takes a step back.

“It’s okay, Riley.”

His eyes drift to Sam’s shield. “I remember Sam,” he says, voice like low-burning coals. “I remember Captain America. I don’t remember them … the same.”

Oh, God.

“It’s still me,” Sam says, and lowers the shield. “It’s not—I’m Captain America too, but it’s still me. I’m still here.”

Riley takes another step back, unprovoked, this time. “My Sam was in the Air Force.”

"Yeah."

"You were both in Washington." Riley's brow furrows. He looks so confused. "You were ... both?"

“Shit, look—” Sam shrugs the shield off, props it under the window, and steps away. “Look. It’s still me, okay?” He swallows. “Riley? I’m—me. Just me. I’m here for you.”

“Why?”

Sam’s lungs are about to pop. “They want to arrest you,” he says. “The UN, they want to bring you in for Mexico City. For everything.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone in Mexico City.”

“I know.”

“I was there for the papers,” he says. “I wasn’t there with Crossbones. Or with Hydra.”

“They’re going to arrest you anyway,” Sam says. He swallows hard, and tries to keep his voice from breaking. “Or—they might not bother arresting you.”

Riley squints at Sam. His eyes flick to the windows, and Sam wonders if he’s missing something. He can see the ruins from here, like mountains in the distance.

“Why did you come here?” Sam whispers.

“I don’t know,” Riley says, whispering back, and it’s like a secret, it’s as if the things Riley and Sam have together belong locked up. “It’s where it started,” he says thoughtfully. “I figured—”

Radio silence. The sound of smoke rising from a flame. Sam feels the quiet like it’s clawing at him. Like it’s prying his ribs apart.

“I’m not here to arrest you,” Sam says.

“Did you come alone?” Riley asks.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been waiting for you. Sam.” His eyes sharpen. “I have to tell you something.”

Sam swallows. “Tell me what?”

“I’m not the only one.”

Sam tenses and scans the apartment.

“No,” Riley says firmly. “No, not here. There is another soldier—a better one.”

_Prototypes._

“Another Winter Soldier?”

“Yes,” Riley whispers.

“Like you?”

“Worse.”

“Worse how?” Sam asks.

Riley’s eyelashes flutter, and his eyes glaze into the middle distance.

“Riley?”

He twitches, hard, as if he were dodging a blow. “Another soldier.” He stops. Starts again. “He has been working for … decades. Longer than me.”

 _We’re all new at this,_ Sam thinks. He thinks of his shield and world wars and cold wars, and he thinks of a ghost story, of bodies strewn across decades. “Super soldier serum.”

“He is fast, agile, speaks ten languages, trained in every kind of combat. His assassinations are legendary—the list—” Riley grimaces and clenches both fists. One metal, one real.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need a head start,” Riley begins, his face scrunched up. “If you thought I was hard to hunt down ...”

Sam can feel the muscles of his face as they twist uncomfortably. “I’m not hunting you. I want to help you.”

“The other soldier. The asset.” Riley’s speech is stilted, as if each word is a single piece of a large puzzle. “You have to hunt him. Or else. He will hunt you.”

“You’re not—”

“The man. The man with the skull.”

“Rumlow?”

Riley looks at Sam, stringy hair falling into his round, dark eyes, catching on his eyelashes. “Yes,” he says. “In Mexico City. The records there. Records. Coordinates.”

“I didn’t have time to look up all the coordinates. I’m sorry. There was Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Mexico. The rest—”

“Russia.”

Beat.

Sam swallows. “What?”

“Siberia.”

“What about Siberia?”

“I was there,” Riley says, tilting his head and gazing into the middle distance. “It was—storage. Holding cell. Where they.”

 _Siberia._ Sam can picture it, just like the bases in Washington and Mexico, just like the file folders: that chair, the IVs, the stress positions, the iron bars, the ice. It feels like ice, just thinking about it—as if the pit of Sam’s stomach is freezing solid.

He takes another step forward. This time, Riley doesn’t step back, but his eyes blaze into focus and he watches Sam warily.

Sam stops, still a cautious distance away, and says, “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Come home, Riley.”

His eyes flick to the corners of the apartment.

“Come home with me,” Sam clarifies. “We can find this other Winter Soldier. We can finish Hydra. Together.”

Riley’s face is etched with anxiety and his shoulders are tense, but his chest rises and falls slowly.

A bang resounds through the mostly-empty apartment. Sam’s spine vibrates with it.

Shouting, slamming, the chunk and click of heavy-duty weapons.

Armed SWAT agents pour through the door. Riley drops into a fighting stance and a dozen M4 carbines aim at him.

“No!” Sam roars. He dives forward, hands out, and puts himself between Riley and the guns.

Riley struggles a little, and Sam grasps his forearm. The metal one, he realizes, only after he pulls Riley close, panting, face-to-face.

“Sam—”

“Don’t shoot!” Sam barks. He looks over Riley’s shoulder, toward the window, toward more guns. Half a dozen more agents swarming the room like ants. Rifles and riot shields. Sam can see the shield he left sitting in a corner, twenty feet away. Dammit, fucking idiot piece of—

“Let me see your hands!”

Sam’s stomach lurches. “Do what they say, Riley.”

“I said hands in the air!”

“Listen to them!” Sam grabs a fisftul of fabric around Riley’s waist and growls. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

“Sam, I can’t—”

“Both of you! Hands up! Now!”

“Trust me!” Sam says, a desperate hiss of steam. He looks around wildly, at the window, at the guns, at the men, at his shield disappearing in a forest of black Kevlar. Sam takes a step back and raises both hands, eyes locked with Riley’s.

 _Please, please, please,_ he’s begging, begging Riley to trust him and begging the SWAT team to be cool. _Please._

Riley tilts his head forward, spreads his arms, and raises them to shoulder height.

For a second Sam’s eyes go out of focus. He thinks, _bird of prey._ He thinks, _please._

A SWAT officer with a riot shield darts forward and grabs Riley’s right arm. He twists it roughly behind his back.

“Hey!” Sam barks. “He didn’t do anything!”

More of the ants come crawling forward, shoving Sam to the side. There’s a scuffle, there’s shouting, and through the mob, Sam can still see Riley, face tense but cool. Three officers grapple with his arms and shove him into the wall. Force his legs apart to pat him down. The baseball cap disappears in the melee.

“He’s not fighting back!” Sam cries. He jumps forward, and an officer slides over to block him. “He’s not fighting _back!”_

“Can’t be too careful, Captain,” a voice behind him sneers.

Sam whirls around. “Rumlow,” he snarls.

He must have come through the window. The sky behind him is overexposed by sunset, lighting him from behind and turning his silhouette into a skeleton. Sam blinks, letting his eyes adjust. This time, Rumlow’s not in his heavy-duty hand-graffitied armor and helmet. No headgear, no rifle, just black, head to toe, a Kevlar vest, a toothy grin. He picks up the Captain America shield and spins it over between his hands. Gives it a casual once-over.

“Captain America without his shield?” he tsks. “Pretty sad sight.”

“I do alright.”

Rumlow’s eyes drift pointedly to where the SWAT team has Riley pinned to the wall.

Sam clenches his jaw and takes a calming breath. Which doesn’t work, really. His shoulders release about 0.2 inches. “Let me take him in,” Sam says evenly. “Let me take care of it.”

“No can do, Cap,” Rumlow says. He hands the shield to one of his teammates, and it disappears into the ant swarm. “You don’t work for the FBI.” He smiles again, flat and cold. “But I do.”

“What’s he under arrest for?” Sam asks.

“Six people died in Mexico City,” Rumlow scoffs.

“Riley didn’t do that,” Sam says. He can feel a joyless smile curling his own lips. “You and I both know it.”

Rumlow spreads his arms. “I’m not the one writing the warrants. I’m just the one with the location and the handcuffs.”

“How did you get a location?” Sam demands.

Rumlow shrugs. “Followed you.”

Sam’s throat ices over. “You’re lying,” he says, automatically.

“Well, I was in Mexico City looking for leads,” Rumlow amends. “But then I heard you were landing, and I figured …” He gestures vaguely between Sam and Riley.

Sam turns, ice spreading to his lungs and his stomach. He looks at Riley. Some kind of wicked industrial handcuffs engulf his hands and his forearms, and he’s chained at the ankles. Sam exhales and he can almost see the steam; the cold in his chest fighting the heat in his eyes.

“Don’t feel too bad, Cap,” Rumlow says, off-handed. “It’s a good thing you were here. Otherwise they’d probably just open fire.”

 _“Fuck_ you,” Sam spits.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Rumlow says, grinning. “You’re under arrest, too.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sam Wilson, you’re under arrest. You have the right to—”

“For what?”

“Obstruction of justice.”

Sam exhales. He unclenches his fists and lifts his hands to gaze at the little black crescent moons carved across his palms, and then he looks up, out the window at the distant ruins. They loom huge on the horizon, the color of honey, and beyond them, blue hills. How huge must they be in person?

“The Avenue of the Dead,” a voice croaks.

Sam turns again to find Riley staring at him from hooded eyes, his raptor scowl unreadable.

“Riley—”

“Take him to the truck,” Rumlow orders.

Sam growls. “He didn’t do any of those things.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

The SWAT team surges across the room, churning black waters that sweep Riley away in the current. Sam sees his shield flash in the crowd.

“That’s mine!”

“Ooh, wrong again,” Rumlow says with a grin. “That’s government property.”

Sam and Rumlow are alone now, all alone in squalor and sunset and a cloud of golden dust.

“We gotta do this all official with handcuffs and everything?” Rumlow asks, eyes glinting.

Sam has never wanted to poison someone with a scowl so damn bad.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The UN detains Riley. Sam tries to help him, and Misty makes a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this were a chess game, which it kind of is, Misty would be the .......... ;)

_Falling in love_ is a stupid saying.

Sam knows falling, and he knows love, and they do not belong in the same sentence.

Love is the swoop across the valley—the way your stomach catches up on the other side. Love is the wave of goosebumps that prickle your spine when you soar up to the belly of a cloud. The flying is the love.

Falling is just taking all that away. That’s what goes first; the bliss and the gentle dew-drop pillow. And then, falling scoops out your insides, and it strips the feeling off your skin. Falling only takes things away.

Sometimes, on the worst days, Sam wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have put so much into one person. It just means that much more to lose. But it’s not like he had a choice. You don’t decide when a person like Riley comes into your life. You don’t decide the sunrise.

So after Riley fell, Sam had space to fill. He worked, he healed, exercised, he met people. None of it came close. He still felt stripped. Still felt like he had his back to the hard rocky ground with a weight on his chest, looking up, looking up, trapped by something heavy and unbearable.

It’s been a long time, though. The weight is still there, but Sam has adjusted. A little.

And now, the one thing that comes close to filling the space Riley left? The shield.

* * *

“Reyes is being detained, for the time being,” Secretary Ross says.

“Okay, so put me in the cell with him!”

Ross raises an eyebrow.

“What happened to _my_ arrest?” Sam demands.

Colonel Rhodes steps forward. “Shut up, Sam!”

Okay, asking to be locked up might not be the best tactic, but it spilled right out of Sam’s mouth, so he goes with it. “Obstruction of justice?” he barrels on. “Some kind of bullshit? Put me in a cell with him.”

Rhodes grabs his arm. _“Sam!”_

Secretary Ross gives a dismissive wave. “It’s fine,” he says calmly. “Those charges are being dropped. It was a smart move by Rumlow, making sure of your motives. But you’ve been surprisingly cooperative.”

Surprisingly.

Sam has been trained to keep his cool in every situation, in the desert, underwater, in a firefight, in the middle of a goddamn freefall in the stratosphere. Of course the fucking United Nations is testing his fucking patience. “If I’m free to go,” he says, keeping his air steady, “let me visit Riley. Just a visit. That’s all I’m asking.”

“He’s being interrogated.” Ross adjusts one of his cufflinks.

Sam realizes, a breath late, that he’s staring at the Secretary of State, mouth open, looking like a rude six-year-old who doesn’t know better. “Interrogated,” he repeats, because that’s—he knows where they interrogate people. He knows where those rooms are. Instinctively, he turns his head down the east corridor.

“No,” Secretary Ross says. “Not the interrogation chambers for … civilians.”

The little bird in Sam’s chest trembles. “Where is he?”

“Sam—”

“Will you sign?” Ross demands.

“Will you let me see Riley?”

“The Winter Soldier is being questioned,” Ross says, “for now. But we may be able to use your help. If you’re cooperative.”

Sam glances at Rhodes, whose eyes are narrowed and fixed on the Secretary.

Sign and see Riley. Sign and see _Riley._

Sam straightens his shoulders. “You would blackmail Captain America.”

“Not blackmailing you,” Ross shakes his head. “In a couple days, it’s nothing more than a basic requirement.” He nods at an intern, spins on his heel, and clicks away down the hall in his expensive Italian shoes.

Sam makes a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. He thinks about following Ross, but Rhodey steps in front of him before he can really round out that thought.

“Does the stubborn streak come with being Captain America, or like, other way around?” His voice pulls Sam out of quicksand.

Sam chuckles. “Thought you didn’t know Steve too well?”

“Just for the Battle of New York,” Rhodey admits. “But he made an impression.”

“He does that.”

“So do you.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I just know when I’m being _fucked over,”_ he says, so dry it hurts. “Especially by the U.S. government.”

Rhodey looks at his feet.

“Come on,” Sam hisses. “Doesn’t he get a phone call or nothing?”

“Sam, Jesus. These things take time.”

“Lawyer? Due process? Or nah?”

“He should get all that soon, alright?” Rhodey sighs.

“He shouldn’t be locked up at all!”

“Sam—”

“No, listen,” Sam cuts him off. “What about the other Winter Soldier?”

“Other what?”

“Other Winter Soldier. Russia, assassinations, ten times worse than Riley? Why aren’t the FBI doing nothing about _that_ Winter Soldier?”

Rhodey’s eyes are round, but other than that, his face doesn’t betray any surprise. “He hasn’t _said_ anything about other Winter Soldiers.”

“Uh, yeah, he has,” Sam says. “He said it to me.”

“Okay, so why hasn’t he said it to anyone else?”

Sam feels like a fucking animal in a cage. He’s about to start pacing. He _wants_ to find out where they’ve got Riley but he doesn’t even know where to _begin._ “He’s been tortured. Brainwashed. You and Misty beat him up in D.C. Crossbones kicked his ass in Mexico. The U.S. fuckin’ government sent three SWAT teams to attack him and arrest him.” Sam pauses for a breath and folds his arms. He catches Rhodey’s eyes and holds them. “Do you really expect Riley to trust any of you?”

“If this other Winter Soldier is that dangerous, yeah, I do!”

“If the other Winter Soldier is that dangerous, we all gotta haul ass to Siberia yesterday.”

“Maybe they sent Crossbones—”

“Oh, for the love of—” Sam throws his hands in the air and strides down the hall. “Fuckin’ Crossbones. He’s _up_ to something, Rhodes. He doesn’t want to arrest no Hydra agents, he fucking _works_ for them.”

“He arrested Riley.”

Sam freezes and fixes Rhodes with his best Captain America scowl. “Riley. Doesn’t. Work. For Hydra.”

“So why won’t he _talk_ to us?” Rhodes asks, voice rising desperately.

“Because you let Crossbones chain him up and stuff him in a cage like a dog.” Sam puts his hands on his hips. “Of course he doesn’t trust you!”

“He’s gotta give us something,” Rhodey sighs, deep and weary. “We can trust a man who trusts us.”

“Rhodey,” Sam says, stepping in close. “He trusts me.”

An old airman buddy of Sam’s once said making eye contact with Colonel Rhodes is like making eye contact with a full-grown wolf. Sam watches as Rhodey’s eyes travel across his face, and he wonders if anyone’s ever said anything like that about Sam Wilson. Wouldn’t be a wolf, Sam thinks, and wonders for a second where they confiscated his wings to.

Rhodes glances up up one end of the hall, and down the other. He clears his throat. “I know where they’re keeping him.”

Sam smiles.

* * *

When he first sees Riley, Sam thinks, _this is bullshit._

And because his thoughts aren’t going for much these days, he says it out loud, too.

“This is bullshit.”

Rhodes shifts uncomfortably. “It’s—that arm is something else, Sam. He could do a lot of damage.”

“So could you. So could I,” Sam argues. That’s all he’s ever doing, lately. Whole lot of arguing, and a whole lot of nothing.

Rhodes glances around the observation room. A bank of monitors covers one wall, half of them displaying Riley’s interrogation room from various angles. There’s also a two-way mirror, which gives Sam the best view. Riley’s in the next room, trapped in some kind of heavy-duty bulletproof-glass chamber, arms and legs strapped by steel reinforcements to a heavy, uncomfortable chair. Sam feels claustrophobic just looking at it.

And he thinks of the other chairs. The ones Hydra built.

Sam’s vision goes blurry for a second.

“Where’s Rumlow?” Sam asks.

“Already left,” Rhodey shrugs. “Still got that assignment. Hunting down Hydra.”

Sam shakes his head. “See? _He_ knows about the other Winter Soldier.”

“He’s hunting down Hydra.”

Sam rolls his eyes. He looks back through the mirror to the containment room. “I thought they were interrogating him?” Sam says, eyes flicking to the dark corners.

Rhodey steps up to the mirror. Riley is the only one inside; a table and chair stand across from his containment chamber, but they’re empty. Rhodey narrows his eyes. “No one’s here anymore,” he says, scanning the interrogation room, the bank of monitors, the computers.

“Or no one’s here _yet,”_ Sam points out.

“Might be right behind us,” Rhodey agrees. “What you planning?”

“I _gotta_ talk to him, Rhodey. I gotta talk to him without these people trying to—I dunno— _coerce_ him, and shit.”

Rhodey sighs. He shoots a glance over his shoulder and then steps in close. “Listen, Sam,” he mutters, “I can buy you some time.”

Sam lets out a breath and grips Rhodey’s forearm. “Thank you.”

 _“Some_ time.” He gives one of those USAF Colonel looks. “Make it quick.”

And with that, Rhodey slips back into the hallway. Sam steels himself, inhales, and enters the interrogation room.

Sam closes the door behind him. Silence buzzes. The room is full with it: full with the silence, the sizzling energy, the spotlights saturating Riley’s glass chamber. It’s full with the _emptiness_. Feels like walking into a thundercloud.

Sam says, “Riley?”

Just that. Just his name, on a heavy exhale.

Riley looks up through hooded eyes.

For a split second, it feels like falling. _Stripped._

He can see Riley falling, like a towering flame grabbed him and yanked him from Sam’s side. That missile may have hit Riley all those years ago over Afghanistan, but from the look in those dark, shadowed eyes, Sam almost knows what it feels like to be shot out of the sky.

“Riley, it’s me.”

Riley blinks.

Sam steps right up to the cage. His eyes flick to the steel-reinforced corners, the four inches of bulletproof glass. “I need to talk to you.”

Riley’s eyes drift toward Sam’s feet.

“I’m sorry about—about this,” Sam whispers.

Riley still doesn’t respond, and that silence, that full, electric silence—it aches in Sam’s chest. That’s a kind of falling, too.

“I didn’t mean to—the FBI—listen,” Sam says, swiping a hand down his face. “All of this?” He gestures toward the cage and the restraints and the wild security. “You shouldn’t be here. We’re gonna fix this. Rumlow never should have arrested you to begin with.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Riley croaks.

Sam almost jumps at the sound. He surges forward and spreads his hands across the front of the cage. “It does matter. Justice _matters.”_

_You matter._

“Sam.”

“Yeah.” His fingers curl, as if he could peel away the bulletproof glass with his bare hands. “Talk to me.”

Riley’s chest rises and falls with a titanium breath.

“Talk to me,” Sam begs. “The other Winter Soldier. We don’t have time to waste, _you_ said so. Riley?”

Riley’s eyelashes flutter.

Sam’s insides crumble like the bone-dust ashes at the edge of a bonfire.

Every time they interact, there’s this high-pitched whistling in the back of Sam’s mind, like when you open the hatch of a high-altitude aircraft and the wind howls, even through noise-canceling headphones. It’s like that. It’s like when you look down from a moving plane, and the air whips past, but the ground seems to stand still.

Sam thinks about Rumlow in Mexico City, and then in Teotihuacán. The Avenue of the Dead. He knows the coordinates. Whatever Rumlow stole from that empty annex—

_We’ve given him clearance to hunt Hydra’s super soldier._

_Prototypes._

Ross didn’t know what he was getting into. He didn’t know about any other super soldiers. But Crossbones must.

“Do you know where it is?” Sam asks.

Riley frowns. “Where what is?”

“The base in Siberia.”

The temperature of the room drops at least ten degrees just from the look in Riley’s eyes. “I know where it is.”

Sam inhales all the cold air. “Where?”

Riley blinks.

“Can you tell me where it is?” Sam asks.

“No.” His voice sounds unnatural, the ugly grind of a dying engine.

“Riley—”

“I can’t say,” he interrupts, eyes sharp. Determined. “I just know how to get there.”

He looks at Sam, and there’s something else carved into his scowl. Something bright.

“That’s it,” Sam says. Enough arguing and silence and distant lightning and _nothing_. “I’m getting you out of here,” he declares. “We’re leaving, and we’re going to Siberia. Whatever it takes, we’re gonna stop Hydra. You and me.”

Riley spreads his hands, studying the restraints.

“I’m getting you out,” Sam says, lightning in his veins. He steps back toward the door. “Do you trust me?”

Riley’s eyes travel from his head to his feet and back up again. “I trust Sam.”

The strange wording makes Sam pause, but there’s no time for that. There’s no time to doubt this.

Riley jerks against the restraints and winces.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back for you.”

He dashes out of the room, through the observation annex, and tumbles into the hallway, colliding with the first person he sees.

“What the hell, Sam?!”

“Misty Fucking Knight!” he gasps. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you.”

She looks like she’s feeling the exact opposite. “It’s cool, I’m fine, you didn’t just barrel into me or nothing.”

“Misty, I’m—sorry, sorry—there’s no time, I just …” Motion pulls Sam’s gaze down the hall. He sees Rhodey, fifty feet away, talking to some official-looking-UN-three-piece-suit. _“Fuck.”_

“You really shouldn’t be here, Sam, this is clearance level—”

“Please!” he says sharply. “I gotta get Riley out of here, there’s no time for all this.”

“Okay, Sam—”

“He knows where Hydra is, but they got him locked up—”

“Sam?”

“I can’t—”

_“Sam.”_

“... Yeah?”

“What do you need?”

Sam can literally feel those words crash into him, warm and beautiful, a tropical surf. “Thank you,” he breathes.

She raises both eyebrows.

“I need a jet.”

* * *

Sam has the engine up and running by the time Misty and Riley arrive. They burst through the door on the roof, metal arms flashing in the sun. Misty has the Captain America shield and Riley has a massive matte black assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Between them, they’re only carrying one set of EXO-7 wings.

Sam raises a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The two of them stride toward him, side-by-side, their shadows slicing east across the roof.

“I think I’ve had this dream before,” Sam calls when they’re in hearing distance, “but none of us was wearing clothes.”

Misty gives him an unimpressed look and shoves the edge of the shield into his ribs a little harder than necessary.

Riley, on the other hand, looks weirdly thoughtful. He narrows his eyes and studies Sam. Or maybe he’s just squinting because the sun is bright.

Sam opens his mouth to speak, but Misty beats him to it.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she says.

“Yes ma’am.” Sam settles the shield onto his left arm and massages his gut.

“I’m serious, Sam Wilson.” She looks angry, but there’s a softness in her brow. “You be careful.”

“I will.” He glances at Riley. “We both will.”

Misty sighs. “You owe me.”

“You could come with us, you know,” Sam says with a smile.

She looks at him, and then looks at Riley, and she doesn’t look upset about the idea. “Not this time,” she admits, finally. “I gotta run point here. It’s my mess.”

“You sure about this, Misty?” Sam says, stepping close and dropping his voice. “If they figure out it was you who helped us—what about your UN job?”

“The way I see it?” she says. “If this registration garbage goes through, the NYPD’s gonna need me more than any US Secretary.”

“You gotta look out for yourself.”

“I am,” she insists. “I’m not gonna look back on this day with no regrets. If I got a chance to help Captain America, I’m gonna take that chance. Every time.”

“Not the real Captain America.”

Misty straightens her shoulders and gives him her sternest officer-of-the-law scowl. “Don’t you dare talk like that, Sam Wilson. Not now.”

“Just kidding?” he tries.

“You’re the one who said ‘a piece of paper doesn’t make you Captain America’.” She jabs a finger in his chest. _“You_ said that. I believed it. And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one.”

Sam tries to laugh it off. He tries. But his shoulders are all tied up in knots. He breathes out. “I’m not sure if Captain America would be running around breaking the law, that’s all.”

“Well,” Misty says, and props her hands on her hips, and does a swift scan of the rooftop, eyes finally landing on Sam’s. “He is now.”

Sam tilts his head. “Sam Wilson is, anyway.”

“How ‘bout Sam Wilson get the hell outta here before I come to my senses and sound an alarm?” Misty demands.

Riley chuckles.

They both turn to stare at him.

His eyes go wide. “What?” he shrugs. “It’s good for someone to keep you straight.”

“Well, that’s one thing I couldn’t do,” Misty says drily.

Sam bursts with laughter, and totally, totally ignores how his cheeks light on fire. “We should go. We should go.”

He looks at the EXO-7 wings, and Misty hands them over. “Hey Riley,” he says. “Got a present for you.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

Riley has this look on his face like lots of different answers are written in his mind, and he doesn’t want to say any of them out loud. “You wear them.”

“Come on,” Sam protests. “If things go wrong, you gotta be able to get away.”

“I’m not wearing them, Sam.” At this point, his face is less _what-should-I-say?_ and more _who-can-I-punch?_ Without another word, Riley stalks over to the quinjet, inspects the interior, and hops inside.

“They’re yours anyway, Sam,” Misty points out.

“I’d be a lot happier if he could just fly away from Hydra when we find them.”

“Maybe he’s thinking the same thing about you.”

That little bird comes to life in Sam’s chest again, just at the the thought.

“Be careful.” Misty touches his elbow. “And get going before _we_ catch you.”

“I fucked up all the tracking shit I could find,” Sam says, eyeing the aircraft and hoping he’s done enough.

“I’ll keep ‘em occupied on this end,” Misty promises.

“Hey,” Sam says, and lays his hand on Misty’s waist. “Thank you. For this.”

“Come on, Sam.”

“I know,” he allows. “But I mean it.”

When they take off, cloaking devices all flickering online, Sam takes another look at the rooftop. Misty is already gone.

* * *

They wheel out over the ocean, and no one seems to be on their tail. Sam sets the autopilot. Riley will have to give him directions when they reach the vicinity, but just getting over Russia is all that matters, for now.

He can feel Riley staring at him. Feels like sitting in a sunbeam, just staying still there and roasting. This about to be a five-hour flight, which is great, thank god for superspeed-James-Rhodes-custom aircraft, but still, that is _way_ too long for Sam to swelter under some Winter-Soldier kind of scrutiny.

Sam clears his throat. “Go ahead and tell me if I go off course.”

“You know how to fly this thing?” Riley asks.

Sam turns to face him fully. He raises an eyebrow. “Do I know how to fly this thing?” he scoffs. “Sure I can fly this thing. I may be retired, but I stay up on all the active aircraft. Come on.”

“Because you’re a nerd.”

“Excuse me?” Sam grins.

“You have to read about all the planes sometime to me.”

Well, that just wipes all the clever responses out of Sam’s head. His throat is closing up. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll have to do that.”

Riley turns back to the windshield, gazing across the ocean, apparently oblivious. “Captain America flies his own planes?”

“I guess,” Sam says. “I do, at least.”

“And you’re Captain America.”

Sam shrugs. He’s a fugitive from the law, is what he is. Doesn’t feel very Captain Americanly.

“Well,” Riley says, shifting in his seat. “All I know about Captain America, I know from books. But I _know_ Sam Wilson. Or I knew him.”

Sam squints. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Riley nods. “And it makes sense.”

Sam says, “Oh.”

Riley smiles out at the horizon. “I remember Sam—I remember you taking those wings out past curfew and doing stupid stunts, also.”

“Okay, alright,” Sam chuckles. “I was a perfect airman, thank you very much.”

“You cursed more on the intercoms than me,” Riley points out. “I remember.”

“In English, maybe.”

A tiny smile trembles on Riley’s lips. He looks away. He makes a soft, displeased noise.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks.

“I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

Sam freezes. He glances at Riley from the corner of his eye, looking for some sign of discomfort. He looks the same, though, relaxed, strapped into the co-pilot seat. “That’s okay,” Sam says, and gently clears his throat. “That’s understandable. You might forget some things, after—that’s okay.”

Riley says, “No,” and he says it plainly but not angrily. If anything, he looks thoughtful.

Sam blinks for a moment. “It—it is okay if you forget things,” he assures him. “I promise.”

“No,” Riley says again, and turns slowly to face Sam. There’s a soft crease between his eyebrows. “Only one thing. I feel like I’m forgetting … something.”

He looks at Sam for a long time with that almost-frown on his face until Sam starts to feel uncomfortable again. That awkwardness, like before, like in Teotihucán and at the UN headquarters. The early-morning chill of a sun unrisen between them.

 _I want to help you remember,_ Sam thinks, but he doesn’t know if that’s what Riley wants to hear.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Riley arrive at the base in Siberia. They find a lot of things there. Several unexpected things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this is the chapter with the minor injury. It's no worse than anything you would see in a Marvel Studios film. In some ways, it's probably much nicer, now that I think of it.

“Oh, so it’s like, a super-secret-double-oh-seven-Russian bunker,” Sam says when they step out of the quinjet. “I mean. I guess I should’ve expected.”

“Which one of us is James Bond?” Riley asks.

“Come on, Reyes,” Sam smirks. “We both know I’m the Bond girl.”

Riley opens his mouth, and his shoulders rise. But he seems to lose his train of thought there, right in the middle, like some kind of cross-traffic just blew past whatever joke was on his lips.

He’s right here. He’s almost here. Riley is here, but there’s still this disconnect; he’s a stranger again every time they brush up against anything too personal.

“Never mind,” Sam says gently. “We got a Winter Soldier to catch.”

Riley frowns.

The base had been easy to find. Riley hadn’t been lying. Autopilot had them sailing over the Ob River for a few minutes when Riley just said, “Here.” He had told Sam to head north, and before long, a snow-capped hill blossomed on the horizon, and a Hydra bunker came into focus.

They find the door to the base ajar, sticky with ice. Sam grunts as he yanks it open.

 _“A la verga,”_ Riley breathes. “What if he already got out?”

“What if Rumlow already got in?” Sam asks grimly.

They look at each other and nod. Riley adjusts his grip on his rifle and steps back so Sam can take point. The seamless flight of migrating birds.

Inside, the bunker is as frigid as the tundra outside. The Siberian cold has sunk deep into the steel and concrete until it’s all just ice. Sam shivers. The corridors are dark, and the winter air scrapes Sam’s nostrils, grips the back of his throat and squeezes. He keeps the shield ready around every corner. There’s nothing but frozen cement and silence, a deep silence that swallows up their footsteps, swallows up their faint breathing. Otherwise, silence, silence. Sam wouldn’t even know Riley was there, except he can sense him covering his back.

Together, Sam and Riley come across another half-open door. They give each other a pointed look and follow the obvious bread crumb into a long hallway with rows of doors on each side. Daylight spills through the doorways, a string of crooked teeth grinning down the long hallway.

It’s like an office building. Just your average fascist business, shooting soldiers down and torturing them into submission.

Up above the doorways, tiny green lights blink, small and almost undetectable, giving away the locations of security cameras. Every room is empty. More silence. At the end of the hall, he creaks the door open and finds an elevator.

“Where did he go?” Sam mutters.

“Three,” Riley mutters.

Sam looks at him and blinks, then looks back at the elevator’s number-pad. It’s caked in a film of dust, except for the button with the number three.

They rattle up to the third floor and make a split-second of meaningful eye-contact. Just a split-second. Before Sam loses his fucking mind. Dust and sunlight and frigid, unbreaking cold. Everything frozen in time—the snow, the doors, Sam and Riley and the very bones of this old structure.

The elevator door opens with a groan.

The chair. It takes a minute for anything else to sink in, since the focal point of the room is that _chair,_ that ugly throne crowned by the twisted antlers of the headpiece. Sam has seen the others, scattered across the globe. Seen pictures. He has even seen video. He knows exactly what they did to Riley in that chair. He can still hear it. He _does_ hear it, every time he has a nightmare.

It sits in the middle of the room, disarming, blurred by dust. And still, just the sight of it lights a match against Sam’s ribcage.

He glances at Riley, who looks nonplussed, eyes narrowed. His gaze carefully sweeps the corners of the cavernous room. Everything else there, the things Sam hasn’t even gotten a good look at because he’s so fired up already.

Riley must be better at compartmentalizing than Sam.

But Jesus, it’s _Riley._ He’s never compartmentalized anything in his life. Sam watches him closely, and imagines Riley, the Riley he knows, laying waste to every last bit of equipment in the room. Riley, who laughs through all his emotions, even—especially—the ones that make him feel the worst.

Sam takes a deep breath. So, things seem different. That doesn’t mean Sam has to _treat_ him different. “What now, double-oh-seven?”

Riley hums. “You still feel like a Bond girl?”

“Not tied down to any railroad tracks, yet,” Sam counters.

Sam relaxes a little, just enough that the clang of the elevator almost makes him piss himself. There’s a sharp metallic screech and the door rumbles open. Sam’s pulse lights on fire; he slides in between the elevator and Riley, dropping into a fighting stance, hoping the shield does its job.

He waits, breathing slow to counteract the way his heart thunders against his ribs.

He’s not sure what he expects—what will this other Winter Soldier do, attack on sight? Leap from the shadows like a bloodthirsty warhound, or lurk in the corners and stalk them with silent ranged attacks? Fighting Riley two years ago was like fighting a buzzsaw—but he’s also the one who shot Nick Fury from a distant rooftop, so who knows? Who knows.

A figure steps from the shadows. Metal flashes in the sunlight.

Sam sucks in a breath. “Rhodey?”

War Machine raises a hand in greeting. “You guys look like you saw a ghost,” he says.

“Not yet,” Sam says. He stands up straight and tries to shake the tension out of his shoulders. “Jesus, Rhodes, you could warn a guy!”

“Y’all weren’t exactly taking phone calls on that jet, Sam.”

Sam narrows his eyes and raises his shield again. Sort of casually. Just a couple inches. “How did you find us?” he asks. His eyes flick over toward the dark, gaping door of the elevator. He doesn’t ask, _who the hell_ else _is gonna find us?_

“Well, I followed you,” Rhodes says with a shrug. The facemask of the War Machine armor flicks up so they can see his face. He smiles wryly.

“How?” Sam demands. “Just with that?” he asks, nodding at the armor.

“I took a quinjet. _Legally,”_ Rhodey says. “I mean, you told me Hydra was in Siberia … and I’m the _only_ person you told.” He shrugs, as much as he can shrug while wearing several pounds of titanium alloy. “So I took a jet to Moscow and tracked you from there.”

“Tracked us?!” Sam barks.

Behind him, he hears a soft click from Riley’s firearm.

“Yeah—”

“I ripped out all our tracking devices!” Sam says, raising his shield again.

“Well, sure, but just the ones—”

“How did you track us?” Sam demands. “Does this mean the whole Air Force is on its way?”

“Dude,” Rhodey snaps. _“I_ could track you. That doesn’t mean anyone _else_ could track you.”

Sam frowns.

Rhodey spreads his arms placatingly. “Just me, man. You know I designed half the tech on those planes. The U.S. government couldn’t even begin—trust me.”

“No one else is here?”

“No,” Rhodey says. “Even though a little back-up probably wouldn’t hurt.”

Sam shakes his head. “Might hurt us _unregistered_ folks.”

“I came alone, Sam.”

Sam glances at the elevator again, clenching his teeth. “Okay,” he says. Lowers the shield. “Ah, fuck it.” He steps forward and shakes Rhodey’s hand, clapping him on the back even though it’s awkward in all that armor. “I thought you were the fucking Winter Soldier.”

Rhodey’s eyes flick to Riley, just for a second. “You haven’t found them yet?”

“Nothing,” Riley confirms.

“No sign of Rumlow, either,” Sam says darkly.

Rhodey nods, takes a step forward, and scans the vast space around them. “Sure looks like we’re in the right place.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, lifting the shield. “Let’s do this.” He looks at everyone and nods.

Riley doesn’t respond. He’s watching Rhodes with a strange frown.

“Riley?”

“You were there,” he murmurs, still watching Rhodes. “You were there when Knight broke me out.”

Sam stares between the two of them.

“I distracted the interrogator,” Rhodey agrees.

They watch each other, hard and careful, for what feels like hours. Finally, finally, Riley lowers his rifle.

Sam exhales a cloud of steam. “Everyone stay together,” he says softly, and turns back to that cavernous concrete chamber.

Riley lifts his rifle, and Rhodey draws a small gun—the one he showed Sam in Mexico City, the one that shocks people instead of punching them through with bullet holes.

It looks like a cave, all poorly-lit and gray cement. Except it’s unmistakably man-made: ninety-degree angles, electronics, desks, jutting slabs of cement, and high above them, slender windows that allow little slices of sunlight through.

Next to the chair stands a towering cylindrical chamber, glass filmed over with dust and frost, fifteen feet tall at least. Sam approaches the chamber while Rhodey fans out the the left; Riley hangs back at the tip of the vee-formation.

“What is this?” Sam asks. He barely raises his voice, but somehow it carries in the emptiness.

“Cryo-freeze,” Riley answers.

Rhodey curses.

Staring up at the bundle of wires on top, Sam lays a hand on the glass. He swipes a window through the dust and stares at the chair enclosed inside, the little knobs and dials and gauges. Unreadable through the old glass.

“This is where they keep him,” Riley says. “The other Soldier.”

The chamber is empty, though.

Rhodey circles around the chair, studying a bank of monitors. “Some of this equipment is turned on,” he calls softly. “I can hear the power.”

Sam’s eyes drift to a metal plate soldered to the steel base of the chamber. He swipes it with his thumb.

SUBJECT  
REYES

Sam’s lungs crumple like autumn leaves. “Riley?” he asks. “Is there another chamber?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think … this is it. The chair is here. This is where …” his voice tapers away into the wind.

Sam looks at him. “This has your name on it.”

So much for compartmentalizing. The look on Riley’s face looks like the lurch of vertigo in your gut. “My …?” He steps up next to Sam, running his metal hand across the metal plate. He glances around the room, frantically searching, the chair, the monitors, the computers, the dust. “I wasn’t the only one.”

“Maybe there’s another—”

“I wasn’t the only one!” Riley turns, eyes dancing. “Sam, I promise.”

“We’ll figure this out,” Sam whispers.

“Uh, y’all wanna see this?” Rhodey calls out. He doesn’t even bother keeping his voice down.

Sam and Riley look over at—a dozen TV monitors, all turned on, all playing the same footage. They hurry to Rhodey’s side, gazing at the video. It looks tame, at first. A man sitting in a chair, in an empty, dirty room.

“Where did this come from?” Sam mutters.

The footage jumps and pops, the film obviously damaged.

Rhodey takes a step closer. “That’s Tony.”

“What?”

 _Stark,_ Sam thinks. He gazes at the screen. He never knew Tony Stark, he only saw pictures, and the footage is too grainy for him to tell—but Rhodey would know. Jesus Christ, James Rhodes would know better than anyone.

And then, with a stab of adrenaline to the heart, Sam remembers: Winter Soldier deployments. Coordinates. Kunar Valley. The Ten Rings.

“Shit,” Sam whispers, because of course. Of course. He didn’t want to think about it before, and then the U.S. government imploded on him, but now it’s here. He’s looking right at it. Of course.

“What is this?” Rhodes breathes. Then, a bellow that makes Sam flinch, “What the hell is this?!”

_“Mierda.”_

Sam turns to Riley, and it punches the air out of him. Riley looks like newspaper, gray and ill, like he could crumple in a light breeze, like a fire would eat him alive in one swallow. Movement catches his eye on the video, and Sam turns back to watch.

Onscreen, a man with a metal arm steps through a door. Steps behind the man in the chair. Sam glances at Rhodey, a motionless silhouette, and back at the monitors, fighting down a wave of nausea. The man with the metal arm isn’t wearing a mask. Sam can see his face, crystal clear, as crystal clear as Rhodes can see Tony Stark.

The Riley onscreen raises a gun with his metal arm. Aims it behind the person’s head. Sam ducks before it happens, but he can’t block out Rhodey’s scream.

 _“No!”_ Colonel Rhodes strikes one of the monitors and it shatters under his metal fist.

“Rhodey—”

“Who did this?!” he roars, whirling around. “Who’s in here?!” The wild echo comes back to them, so hard it makes Sam’s throat hurt.

Riley takes a step back, watching Rhodes closely. The movement must get Rhodey’s attention, though. His bellows fade to nothing and his eyes hone in on Riley, on his gun and his metal arm. He looks at Riley the way a fire looks at newspaper.

“No one else is here,” he says, voice dropped into a predatory bass.

Sam takes a shaky breath. “Rhodey, please.”

“No one else was ever here,” Rhodey says, a manic grin splitting his lips. “There’s no other Winter Soldier.” He nods at the glass chamber, but doesn’t take his eyes off Riley. “His name is all over. There’s no one else. It’s just him.”

“Rhodey, come on, there’s someone else here, we gotta find—”

“Did you know?” Rhodes barks.

Sam takes a shaky breath. “I didn’t—I thought, maybe—but I forgot, Rhodey, I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t—”

“Bullshit.” Rhodey’s head snaps to face Riley, War Machine armor whirring and clicking.

Riley backs up again. His hands flex around his rifle.

“It’s not his fault, Rhodey, you know—”

_“He killed Tony Stark!”_

There it is. The statement rings like war drums off the concrete walls, one end of the huge chamber to the other, howling in Sam’s skull. There it is.

Riley looks at Sam, stricken, eyes shining and ringed in white.

“Rhodes,” Sam says firmly, “it wasn’t him, he didn’t have a choice. Hydra killed Tony Stark. We have to find—”

“We ain’t gotta find nothing,” Rhodes growls. “Hydra is right here.” His facemask closes with a clink, and he raises one hand. His suit whines with the tell-tale power surge to weapons.

“No!” Sam cries, and dashes over to Riley. Just in time, he catches the energy pulse with his shield. “Rhodes!”

“Outta my way, Sam!” He tries for another shot, but Sam blocks it again—blocks three more shots until Rhodey howls in frustration.

Sam grabs Riley’s arm. “Get out of here,” he cries. “I can get through to him, but you just have to—”

“Sam! Look out!” Riley’s eyes go wide, and he yanks Sam to the side. They tumble to the ground in a clatter of metals; Riley’s M16 skitters away. Sam looks up and sees a sizzling slice cut right out of the chair, the molten metal burnt clean away by War Machine’s weapon system.

“Holy shit,” Sam breathes. He looks at Riley, whose face is plastered with the same horror Sam feels. “You need to go!” Sam says again, and he fucking means it this time.

Riley scrambles to his feet, rifle forgotten twenty feet away. He darts toward the door.

Once Riley is headed for safety, Sam pushes himself up and turns back to Rhodes. “Listen to me, please,” he cries. “We can talk about this, don’t—”

The War Machine armor turns slowly and fixes its inhuman stare on Sam. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“It’s not him, Rhodey! We have to stop _Hydra!”_

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.” A massive turret unfolds over his shoulder, whirrs, and aims for Riley where he’s dashing for an exit.

“No!” Sam shouts.

He hurls his shield at the turret. With a clang, it ricochets off the weaponry, sending it askew, knocking Rhodey’s head aside in a burst of sparks. When Rhodes looks up again, his mask is twisted, a deep canyon cut through the metal. He curses and rips off the War Machine mask. Deactivates the helmet so he can see. And he raises a gun.

Sam’s heart skips, and then he realizes it’s that half-taser-half-firearm invention. He aims it at Riley.

On pure instinct, Sam activates his wings. They unfurl with the familiar carbon-compound groan; folded delicately over Sam’s back one moment, unzipped across a fifteen-foot wingspan the next. Rhodey fires, and Sam’s right wing intercepts the hit. Electricity zaps through the device and Sam sees white. “Holy _fuck.”_ One knee buckles as the wing crumples. Sam gasps. Catches himself.

“Whoa,” he grunts, looking back up at Rhodes with a grimace. “That’s a good buzz.”

“Sam, stop getting in the way!” Rhodey almost sounds like himself for a second, but then his voice is hard and throaty again. “He’s not the guy you th—”

 _“Shut up,”_ Sam gasps. He tries to close his wings, but only the left side works; the right is too damaged by electricity. He pulls the release, and the broken right wing falls stiffly to the floor. “He _is,_ Rhodey. He is that guy, he’s my friend, and I’m helping him.”

“You’re helping _Hydra,”_ Rhodey spits. “Captain America would know better.” He activates the suit with a rush of energy, and he lifts off like a bullet after Riley.

Sam stumbles to his feet, surging after them, but clumsy, the way a baby bird figures out a tree branch for the first time; that shot wasn’t exactly a lightning strike, but it wasn’t no love tap, either. He grabs the shield from the floor and uses it as a crutch, using the momentum to throw himself forward. He’s still too far—all he can do is watch—as Rhodey tackles Riley to the ground. “Don’t hurt him!” Sam cries.

Rhodes stands up. He casts a shadow over Riley, nothing but the metal arm glinting in the darkness. “I’m taking him in,” Rhodes calls. “I’m finishing this.”

Rhodey raises a hand and aims a thruster.

Sam spins and releases the shield. It slices through the air and knocks Rhodey’s arm aside in a shower of sparks. The electro-pulse careens off course, slicing a neat white line through the elevator cables. With a deafening screech, the elevator drops out of sight.

The shield ricochets off of Rhodey and into Riley’s outstretched arms. He grabs it out of the air with a clang, metal on metal.

Rhodes curses and takes aim again.

Sam only has one wing left, but that doesn’t mean he’s helpless. Years experimenting? Years of superior officers chastising him for pulling stupid stunts up in the dull empty Middle Eastern sky? Not such a waste.

Sam leaps between them, and before Rhodey can fire, he activates his wings again—or, just the one wing. It ratchets open and unfurls through the elevator doorway, long and sharp and elegant, and slams into a brightly-lit panel on the wall. Electricity whines; the panel erupts in gold light, and the steel-reinforced door activates.

It slams shut on the War Machine armor—and on Sam’s wing, his left arm, and half his ribcage.

Sam howls.

It’s like hitting the ground from a great height: the way the air rushes out of Sam’s lungs, leaving them empty and bruised. He gasps for air, chest screaming.

But Rhodey is trapped, too. Crushed against Sam, back-to-back, both of them wedged together between metal and concrete.

War Machine squirms. He struggles behind Sam. Can’t move. He raises his arm again, fires an energy blast—but Riley has the shield, now. The blast caroms off the red-white-and-blue into a window, and the glass shatters into a shimmering carpet around Riley’s feet.

“Go!” Sam bellows. “Riley, get out of here!”

He peeks out from behind the shield, eyes round. “They’ll arrest you, Sam.”

Sam says, “I don’t care,” and he means it.

“Sam—”

“Go.” He gasps, trying to ignore the pain in his arm.

Riley’s feet remain planted. “You can’t. You can’t do this for me.”

“There’s nothing better to do it for.”

Behind him, Rhodey twists against the solid steel door. “Stop!” he barks, accompanied by a bang against the steel door. It doesn’t budge. “I’m arresting _both_ of you!”

A firearm unfolds from the armor on his shoulder and releases a flock of flashbangs. One goes off between Sam and Riley, searing their vision, knocking the Captain America shield aside. It clatters harmlessly against a wall. Another explosive goes off at Riley’s feet, sending him off-balance; and one strikes him in the stomach, throwing him ten feet across the room. He tumbles into a heap on the floor.

“Riley!”

No response. His shoulders shift weakly.

Sam struggles against the door, but it’s no use; stabbing pain shoots up his arm, burning dully in his left shoulder. His fingers are starting to go numb. “Get up, please!”

Riley lifts his head, and then his shoulders. He looks at Sam—glowers at him, an acrid stare. The same lifeless, knifelike look he gave Sam on the helicarrier two years ago. He spits blood onto the floor and pushes himself to his feet.

From the corner of his eye, Sam can see Rhodey raise an arm to point a repulsor at Riley. Sam shouts wordlessly and bucks his head, throwing off Rhodey’s aim. It buys them a split-second.

A split-second is all Riley needs.

He springs forward and thrusts his metal hand right into the War Machine armor. Right into his chest. An electric howl fills the room, and a burst like a power surge.

Another whine, like an enormous battery powering down.

Riley staggers backwards, panting. He drops the arc reactor to the floor with a clack. It sits there, motionless, wires snapped, bright and innocuous.

Behind Sam, Rhodey slumps. He can hear metal grinding on metal, and a soft crackling noise. Sam realizes that it’s his wing—giving in under the pressure of the steel door. He squeezes his eyes shut and sucks in a breath. His teeth feel cold and his eyes feel hot.

The room is slanting, a little. Sam struggles to lift his head again; it’s so heavy. Riley moves again, and Sam tracks the movement slowly. Something in Riley’s eyes looks unreal. Manmade. He rolls his shoulder—the metal one—and tilts his head.

Sam’s voice is like smoke in his throat. “Riley?”

His head twitches at the sound of his name. With a heavy brow and a dark glare, Riley stalks toward them. Sam can feel his heart race, but that could be from the shooting pain in his arm.

Riley strides forward and reaches for Rhodey again—with the metal arm again—but the War Machine armor is useless, now, and its helmet lies shattered across the room.

“Riley!”

A deep clang echoes in the room. Rhodes shifts again, the plates of his suit digging into Sam’s shoulder. A screeching noise, metal on metal, shrieking through Sam’s ears.

The pressure on Sam’s arm disappears. A sound like TV static, and then Sam’s wing crumples to the floor in two splintered pieces. He falls to his knees and gasps. He’s free. Using his legs and his right arm, he crawls out of the doorway, sucking in oxygen. The electric pain in his left arm vanishes, and after a colorless moment, it sweeps through him again like wildfire. His bones crackle with it, wasted, ashen branches.

Sam groans and doubles over. Hugs his arm to his chest and stares at the floor between his knees, stares hollowed-out and razed to the ground. He feels like a fire, a roaring bonfire. His left arm: the acidblue heartbeat. His body, curled on itself: the orange flame.

“Sam.”

“Sam.”

“Sam!”

He lifts his head and hisses and feels the air pass through his lips like steam. His friends stand above him. Facing each other. Two towers of the same fortress. The War Machine armor is extinguished, slate gray, but while Sam watches from the ground, Rhodey pulls some kind of baton, a high-tech knightstick, from the back of his suit. He brandishes it and drops into a fighting stance.

Riley raises both hands, unarmed. Surrender. Even from across the room, from the floor, from a burning ocean of pain and shock, Sam can see the whites of his eyes. Can see them shining. And while Sam is watching, Riley’s gaze turns on him.

He looks at Sam like he’s falling out of the sky.

Rhodes says, “Stand down, soldier.”

Riley’s gaze swings to War Machine, then back to Sam, wrung out. His face swims out of focus. As if a sheet of water flows between them. “Sam is hurt.”

“I said stand down.”

Riley whispers, “Please.” He takes one cautious step toward Sam, hands still skyward, body still facing War Machine.

War Machine twitches. “Not another step!”

“Sam is hurt,” Riley says again, ignoring the order, shuffling toward Sam.

War Machine adjusts his grip on the baton, but doesn’t follow him. Doesn’t stop him. Doesn’t even see it coming when Riley darts forward, ducks to one side, and twists War Machine’s arm behind his back.

“No!” Sam roars. Black spots erupt in his vision.

The room rattles with booms of metal on metal; thunderclouds. The struggle is brief. With a wordless bellow, Riley hurls War Machine through the elevator’s flimsy metal grate. Sam can see the armor, gray-on-black, framed by the gaping doorway, and then Rhodey plummets down the elevator shaft, drumfire echoing behind him.

“Rhodes,” Sam hisses. He doubles over with a wave of pain. He sucks in a breath like ash, braces himself, and lifts his head to look at Riley.

He has a gun pointed at Sam’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love you guys <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The point.

Sam blinks.

“Riley?”

Is he seeing things?

His arm hurts so bad.

He blinks again.

Riley stands above him, motionless, still aiming at Sam. As his vision clears, Sam realizes it’s the electro-shock gun. Rhodey’s taser. A small noise escapes his lips as he pants; he doesn’t think he can take another hit from that thing. Not now.

“Riley?” he whispers. “What … what about stopping Hydra?”

No response. Riley doesn’t even move, except a flutter of eyelashes.

Laughter. Sam squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, baffled. Riley isn’t laughing. Sam looks over his shoulder at the elevator. Still no sign of Rhodey.

“That was easier than I thought!”

Sam turns around again, his body tilting gently to one side. What he sees hurts more than any broken bones. This is so much deeper.

“Rumlow,” he sighs.

Crossbones laughs again. “You had no idea,” he giggles. “I thought Captain America was smarter than this. I guess Sam Wilson is just too … trusting.”

Maybe so. He believed Riley. He was the only one who believed Riley, everyone else said he was being stupid, he even got Misty in this mess, like a fool. Now look at them.

Sam wobbles. His muscles shake. “Yeah, I trusted him,” he sighs. “It’s Riley.”

“I was counting on it.”

“Counting on it?”

“On you trusting him.”

Wait. Sam looks at Riley, whose expression is still lifeless. _Wait._

“What did you do to him?” he asks, each word a stone in his chest.

“Trigger words,” Rumlow says with a toothy grin. He lifts up a little book. Red with a black star. “You were looking for this in Mexico City.”

“Looking for …”

“Or maybe he was looking for it,” Crossbones says, jabbing his thumb at Riley. “Doesn’t matter. I found it.”

Sam claws through his mind, jumbled and overheated and turning to mush. He remembers the video. Mexico City. “A book?”

“A Russian book,” Rumlow says brightly. “You might call it an instruction manual.”

So that’s what Sam missed. “Riley,” he croaks.

No reaction. The look Riley gives him is nothing. Nothing at all. He doesn’t even blink. The gun in his metal arm is unwavering, pointed blankly at Sam’s chest, only a few feet away. It’s Riley’s face, and nothing else. A man who has been to the gallows once before and has nothing left to want or to give.

“Any time, now,” Rumlow says. He’s glaring at Riley. “We talked about this. Get rid of Iron Patriot, get rid of Captain America.”

Riley blinks, finally, slowly.

“Riley,” Sam breathes. “You know me.”

“He does know you.” Crossbones’ voice is sandpaper against Sam’s skull.

Sam screws up his face and tries to concentrate, but Crossbones won’t shut up.

“The key was getting him to remember you without remembering _all_ of you. He needed to trust you, but he couldn’t fall head-over-heels, or anything.”

Sam heaves a sigh. “Why do you always talk so goddamn much.”

“So that was the hardest part,” Rumlow gloats, ignoring him. “Getting him to half-remember. That, and making sure his face got on all that security footage in Mexico City. He’s a sneaky bastard.”

Sam doesn’t answer. He’s done. Rumlow doesn’t mean anything. A cockroach. Sam doesn’t care. The world is so much bigger than that, the world is standing right here, right here, right next to Crossbones.

Bracing his good hand on the ground, Sam heaves himself to his feet. He stumbles a little. Finds a balance. He feels so empty-handed. His gaze tracks across the room, stuttering, unsteady; his broken wing; the shield, thirty feet away.

Even the shield wouldn’t help, anymore.

“Riley,” he says. “It’s me, Riley. It’s Sam.”

The gun twitches.

Looking at Riley is like looking at the sun. Burning so hot Sam’s eyes begin to ache. Begin to water.

Crossbones looks at Riley and narrows his eyes. “Could you shoot him already?” he says drily. “I really don’t wanna do the whole evil monologue.”

“Riley.” Sam curls his injured arm around his stomach. “You can shoot me, if you have to.”

Crossbones scoffs. “What kind of fucking drama.”

“You can shoot me,” Sam continues, not even sparing Rumlow a glance. “But I don’t think you will. I believe in you, Riley. Like I always have.”

A titanium whine curls from the metal arm. “You are Captain America,” Riley says, and his voice is nothing but the crunch of gravel.

“I am,” Sam agrees. “Sam Wilson. Me. I’m Captain America. That includes everything. The fights I start, the rules I break. The people I love.” He clutches his broken arm. “I love you, Riley.”

If nothing was in Riley’s eyes before—everything is in them now.

“Sam?”

“I love you.” Sam’s body remembers so much; flying and falling, the Middle East, the Chitauri, Riley’s lips against his jaw, Riley’s fist against his jaw. And his body remembers how that electric shock felt, too. Now is not the time for secrets. “I love you. The shield doesn’t change that, and I don’t change the shield. That’s the point.”

“This is touching,” Crossbones growls, “but you don’t have _any_ shield, right now. “Take him out, Sold—” Rumlow cuts himself off with a grunt. He spasms and falls to his knees. “What th—”

Riley shoots him again. Point blank in the sternum. Crossbones splutters and curls backward, knees splayed.

Riley shoots him again. He jerks, soundless.

It’s like a bucket of cold water when Sam snaps to his senses. “Riley!” He darts forward and grabs the metal arm. It doesn’t budge. “Riley, it’s okay!” Fuck that, right, he doesn’t bother with the metal arm: just wraps his good arm around Riley’s neck and holds him. “It’s okay,” he says, softer. Presses his forehead to Riley’s temple.

With a gasp, Riley drops the weapon.

“It’s okay.”

“No,” Riley whispers. “What did I …”

“It’s okay,” Sam says. So much going through his head, the fucking wasteland of a natural disaster, and none of it forms into words. All he can say is “It’s okay,” and breathe and wrap an arm around Riley’s waist and cling to him.

“What did I do?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Sam murmurs. Riley’s face is so close, a cry for help trapped in the water on his lashes. “It’s okay. You’re back.”

 _“Yes_ I’m back,” he hisses. “What did I _do?”_ He gazes around the cavernous room like he’s clawing for the pieces. Dragging them back together. His eyes land on Sam, on his arm, and they light up like flashbulbs. “Oh my God. I did this. I did this.”

“I’m fine,” Sam cuts in.  He brings his hand to the side of Riley’s neck, digging his fingers into his scalp, come back, it’s okay, “I’m fine, I promise—”

“Sammy—”

Well he _was_ fine.

The nickname is just like ripping the pages out of a photo album and flinging them across a room.

“I’m so sorry,” Riley says, oblivious to the way he just stomped on the plates of the earth. “I did this. It was me. All of it.” He clutches Sam’s forearm, fingers shaking where they dig painfully into muscle. “Stark. Fury. You and Crossbones. The W—oh, God, the War Machine, what did I do—”

He crashes to his knees, and Sam follows, grasping Riley’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, he was in the armor, he’ll be fine—”

“Your friend—what have I done—”

“I was right there, too, Riley,” Sam says, chasing his eyeline. “I was right there with you. He attacked us, and we protected each other. I was right there with you.”

“You!” Riley says. His eyes snap up to meet Sam’s. “I do all this and—and I bring you with me. Without me—your friend—Sam—”

His voice hitches as he struggles for breath. He’s working himself up, now, eyes streaming, the shock in his brain and his body breaking against him like tidal waves, and he’s still wounded, Sam knows there’s scorched flesh howling under singed leather, and god knows what else.

“I did this.”

“It’s okay,” Sam says, and pulls Riley to him. He clutches him like it’s the last time. “Rhodes will be okay,” Sam says, soft and clear for the both of them. And he believes it. He has to. “That armor can stop anything. That was—that was thirty feet, tops. Rhodes is fine.”

“What about Rhodes?” a voice calls behind them.

Sam’s heart goes into free-fall, his chest vacant, the vacuum left behind after a lightning strike. He clutches Riley and turns around.

 _“Rhodey,”_ he breathes, and his heart restarts double-time. “You’re okay.”

With a soft clunk, Rhodey leans against a doorframe, panting. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he says. “You okay?”

Sam and Riley blink at him, and then at each other. Riley looks like he’s just been dragged up from the bottom of a ravine, eyes round and ragged. Sam’s arm throbs. He probably doesn’t look any better than Riley.

“We’re okay,” he says softly. “We thought you—”

A small-animal sound curls from Riley’s throat.

“We were worried,” Sam says, looking up at Rhodes.

“All I am is _tired,”_ Rhodey says, pushing himself off the wall and limping over. “You know how annoying it is when you can’t fly everywhere?”

“Yes,” Sam and Riley both say at once.

They look at each other.

Laughter bursts from Sam’s chest. Riley ducks, and his hair falls into his face, but Sam thinks he can see a smile playing on his lips.

“I feel like I missed a lot,” Rhodes says.

“Nah, just the bad guy’s evil monologue.”

Rhodey’s eyes flick to Riley, and then to Crossbones, where he lies unconscious in the middle of the room.

Sam lets out a deep sigh. His shoulder aches and his back aches and his head feels like it’s about to tip right off his shoulders.

He’s gotta finish this.

“So, Rhodey,” he says. “Think we could get away with just leaving him here to rot?”

“I think you’re in enough trouble with the law, Captain.”

“You should arrest him,” Riley croaks. He shifts a little, pushing his hair out of his eyes, looking at Sam and then at Rhodes.

Sam can tell the look on his face is really embarrassing. He clears his throat and tries to swallow down the sappiness as he looks at Rhodes. “You bring handcuffs?"

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Restraints strong enough for a metal arm.”

Ice starts to form in Sam’s throat. Without looking, he tightens an arm around Riley’s waist. “Rhodey,” he breathes. “You can’t take him. You can’t. Not now.”

“Sam—”

“Not now,” he whispers, not after everything, after the video and the trauma and the broken bones. Not after Riley clawed his way out of the storm.

“I’m not arresting Riley,” Rhodey says with a reluctant smile.

Sam’s throat goes hot in an instant, steam bursting behind his eyes.

Colonel Rhodes lifts his chin and lowers his eyes. “I came here to arrest the real bad guy. We know who that is.”

“How are we gonna explain this to the Superman Task Garbage, or whatever the hell it’s called?”

Rhodey spins a little and looks at a surveillance camera blinking in the corner. “I think they’re all on.”

“You think they’re—oh my god,” Sam sighs.

“Crossbones probably turned them on himself,” Rhodey says. “When he rebooted the system.”

“Okay,” Sam says. He slumps a little in Riley’s arms. “Okay, okay,” he says. He nods, and he can’t seem to stop. “Okay.”

“Sam?”

The pain in his shoulder is a burn, now, like when you wait too long to take painkillers and the fire starts to chew deeper. “Okay,” he says. He leans forward and drops his head onto Riley’s shoulder. “Okay.”

He can feel Riley’s hand curl around the back of his neck and hold him still.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Rhodey, and Riley return to New York, though they don't know what kind of welcoming committee to expect.

They leave one quinjet behind in Siberia.

“Might be cramped,” Sam had pointed out, leaning into Riley as they approached the little stolen aircraft. Another almost identical plane hunkered behind it in the snow. The one Colonel Rhodes flew here.

“I’d rather stick together,” Rhodey had said.

No one had argued.

Without discussion, Rhodey had strapped Crossbones securely into cargo and taken the pilot’s seat. No one argued with that, either.

Now, Riley and Sam are seated behind the cockpit while Sam figures out how to MacGyver decent medical care out of a paltry first-aid kit.

“You’d think the Avengers could at least stock more than one ACE bandage,” Sam jokes.

“I’ll put it at the top of my to-do list,” Rhodes answers.

Sam can’t tell if he’s kidding, but he’ll take it. “Can you add Vicodin to the list too?”

Riley huffs a little as he struggles to loop gauze and tape around Sam’s neck into a makeshift sling. “Stop moving,” he murmurs.

“I’ll be fine,” Sam says.

Once Sam’s arm is secure, Riley straightens up. He’s close, filling Sam’s vision, and not just because it’s still a little fuzzy around the edges. With his good hand, Sam reaches out to touch the wound over Riley’s stomach. His fingers graze the hole burnt through Riley’s Kevlar vest.

“I’ll be fine, too,” Riley says. “Doesn’t even hurt.”

Sam kind of smiles, but mostly his face just twists up on itself. “Yes it does.” He spreads his hand over Riley’s wound. Another scar, thanks to Sam.

Riley’s lips brush the corner of his mouth.

Sam freezes.

“Sorry.”

“No,” Sam breathes, and looks up at Riley. His eyes are round, fixed on Sam’s shoulder. Sam watches the tip of his tongue as it peeks between his lips, just for a moment. “Don’t be sorry.”

“You’re just …” Riley trails off.

“I’m just what?”

Riley catches his gaze. “I remember, now.”

“What?”

“I remember,” Riley whispers. He doesn’t explain, just fixes Sam with wide, starlit eyes, and touches Sam’s face.

Sam lifts a hand and lays it over Riley’s. He can feel Riley’s thumb under his bottom lip. A flock of birds takes off in his stomach.

* * *

“Maybe we should have called ahead,” Sam says. Below, the landing pad for the UN headquarters fills their vision. Like a slow, steady zoom on a decent Nikon.

“As Cap or as Sam?” Rhodes raises an eyebrow.

“They’re the same.” Sam shrugs. “I was worried, for a minute, there. But they’re the same.”

Rhodey exhales a gust of relief. “I’ll stand by that.”

Sam glances at Riley, stood behind the passenger seat, looking like he’s about to accidentally rip off the headrest with his metal hand. His Kevlar vest is open, revealing a thin T-shirt. Underneath that, Sam tries not to think about the crinkled bandage. Or at least, tries not to beat himself up over it.

When Rhodey wheels the quinjet around for landing, the roof is empty; but by the time Sam opens the hatch, dozens of people are spilling through two separate entrances. Sam steps out in front of Rhodey and Riley.

The first wave of men and women are armed. A few riot shields, a few rifles, “POLICE” splashed across a few chests, “SECURITY” on others.

That’s less than half of their welcoming committee, though. Swimming behind the SWAT team are heads Sam knows: Vision, the Black Widow, and Misty are there; a white head of hair next to a scarlet head of hair, which makes Sam think _Maximoffs_ ; suits and skirts he doesn’t recognize, which makes him think _lawyers_ ; a couple folks in plain old NYPD uniforms.

Seems like a lot, but Sam isn’t scared, despite the useless left arm. He’s got the shield, for one thing. And he’s got Rhodey, and he’s got Riley, who both help, for different reasons.

Secretary Ross dissolves out of the crowd. He saunters up to Sam and stops fifteen feet away, shaking his head. “Sam Wilson,” he calls, so everyone can hear. “You have a lot of nerve, showing up like this.”

“Don’t wanna break your heart,” Sam says, “but this is _not_ the stupidest thing I’ve done all day.”

“Did you get it out of your system?”

“Got Hydra out of yours.”

Ross narrows his eyes. “And yet, he’s standing right next to you.”

“My _friends_ and I,” Sam says pointedly, “came here in good faith. We brought you a criminal, and we were hoping you might arrest him for us.”

“Besides the Winter Soldier, _you_ are the only criminal I see, Sam Wilson.”

Jesus, the first-last-name thing is some kind of suburban white dad bullshit. Sam almost rolls his eyes. He’s kind of already pushing his luck, though. “You gonna arrest me?” he challenges.

“You heard the man.” Ross turns to the nearest Security officer. “Arrest him.”

Sam raises an eyebrow and watches the woman shift uncomfortably. She looks at Ross, at Sam, and back at Ross again. “You want me to … arrest Captain America?”

“Sam Wilson is a fugitive from the law,” Ross states. And, again: “Arrest him.”

The SWAT teams lower their rifles.

“I said, _arrest him.”_

The riot shields turn to the side. One man lays his gun on the ground outright. The agents glance at each other, shrugging; some of them look at Sam with a mix of trepidation and confusion. Involuntarily, he can feel a little half-smile forming. He seeks out Misty Knight in the crowd and catches her eye; she has one hand on the arm of a coworker, a man in an NYPD uniform who looks nervous.

But for the most part, everyone on the roof seems to have their mind made up.

“Is anyone going to arrest Wilson?” Ross demands.

“No.”

The call bursts out of nowhere. Sam’s not sure who said it, but a murmur of assent sweeps through the crowd.

Ross takes a step closer. He doesn’t raise his voice, this time. “Who am I _supposed_ to be arresting, Wilson?”

“Crossbones.”

“Brock Rumlow,” Colonel Rhodes adds, like he’s explaining something to a child. “He’s already locked up. You can check cargo.”

“Might need a hospital,” Riley says, voice still hoarse.

Ross looks at Riley the way you’d look at a dead animal in the road.

“That’s real nice of you, Riley.” Sam says. “And he’s right, Secretary. We had what you might call a, uh, skirmish.”

Rhodes ducks his head and coughs.

From his safe ten-foot distance, Ross’s eyes sweep over Sam again. “You have been personally biased against Rumlow for at least two years,” he says. “Why should I believe you?”

“Good question,” Sam says. “Wait, let me just—Riley? Here you go.”

Sam hands the shield to Riley.

Dead silence.

No one on the roof makes a sound.

Sam can practically hear the pigeons cooing on the sidewalk from ten stories up.

He ignores everyone. Turns to Rhodey and retrieves the footage they scavenged from the security cameras. They had checked it on the flight back; it was an old-fashioned camera, but still provided crystal clear video of Rumlow’s evil-overlord-Hail-Hydra speech. Sam holds the tape out for Ross. The Secretary is still staring cross-eyed at Riley with the Captain America shield.

Sam clears his throat. “I only got the one good hand, and all.” He waves the tape a little to get Ross’s attention.

“What’s this?”

“Surveillance tape.” Sam steps closer, stretching, almost touching it to Ross’s chest. “Hydra Big Brother-ed themselves.”

After a brief staring contest, through which Sam does nothing more than raise an eyebrow, Ross finally takes the camera. “We’ll be combing through the video. The quinjet’s systems. Rumlow himself.”

“Uh, good.”

Over Ross’s shoulder, the other Avengers begin to emerge. Vision’s face is neutral, as ever, but Misty and Wanda look pretty satisfied, and the Black Widow has a look on her face that really lives up to the name. Ross glances over his shoulder and stiffens.

Sam holds out a hand, and, surprisingly, Ross shakes it. When they let go, Sam feels a nudge on his elbow.

Riley holds the shield out for him.

“Nah,” Sam waves him off. “Hang onto it.” He turns back to Ross. “I might need the free hand. Or, maybe I don’t got paperwork to sign, after all …?”

Ross squints.

“I bet you’re alright, Sam,” Misty says with a smirk. “I think the Secretary’s fancy registration project kinda froze in its tracks.”

Wanda’s eyes brighten. “This reminds me,” she says, “Emma Frost has an audience with the Assembly tomorrow.”

Ross shifts a little so that he’s farther away from the Scarlet Witch. The Black Widow inches closer on his other side. He clears his throat. “Of course,” he says. “I won’t need a signature from you, Wilson.”

“Sweet.” Finally, he takes the shield back from Riley and leads him across the landing pad. The crowd parts for them, a sea of round eyes and slack jaws.

“I’ll still need paperwork for this arrest, Wilson!” Ross calls.

“You can mail it to me,” Sam tosses over his shoulder.

* * *

Of course, when Sam punches out for a nice long vacation, he doesn’t give anyone a mailing address. Not even his mom. She still calls him once a week, though. By now, he’s told her about Riley, or at least told her a rough outline without any gruesome details.

(“Does he want to talk?” she had asked, voice like melted butter.

Sam had glanced at Riley, bent over in a wicker chair, elbows on his knees. He blinked owlishly. “Not yet,” Sam had said.)

They’re also not far from Rebeca. Geographically. Riley insists he’s not ready for that either, that the _real_ distance is still too much, but these things take time. Sam knows. Jesus, he knows how recovery takes time.

So they’re taking a break.

Just a vacation. He’ll be back. He even brought the shield along. It’s in a corner, resting against an EXO-7 suit. They kind of clash with the golds and seafoams and pinks of the beach house, and Sam doesn’t really plan on using them, but it fits. Like Riley said, it makes sense.

This is not the first time Sam’s been to Florida, but it’s his first time in the Keys. His favorite part is how tough it is to get here. Several hours and several miles of terrifying two-lane-bridge later, it’s safe to say the only individuals who know Captain America’s location are Riley and the iguanas lurking on the beach.

He’s got one in the corner of his eye, now. That’s how the mornings go. Sam watches the birds, and the lizards watch Sam.

Right now, Sam has his feet dangling in the little white-cement swimming pool on the back patio. The water is warm from days and hours simmering in the sun.

In the distance, Sam watches the birds scud across the rising tide. A pelican sits perched on a post at the end of their dock, and a frigatebird has been teasing him for the last half hour. She swings out over the ocean, disappears in the palm tree canopy, then wheels around over the water again; back and forth, but never coming close for a better look.

It makes Sam smile. The easy spiral under the coastal clouds.

They have a pool and a porch and a patch of sunbleached sand, a view that rolls right into the ocean. The hours start late and go by slow. The relaxation is so deep, Sam doesn’t even start when Riley sneaks up behind him and loops his arms around Sam’s neck.

“Which ones are you watching now?” Riley asks.

Sam leans into him. “Frigatebird.”

“Hmm.” Riley props his chin on Sam’s shoulder. “The female again?”

“I think so. She won’t come closer.” Sam kicks his feet and the water laps against the sides of the pool.

“You could go to her,” Riley mumbles.

Sam smiles at the smell of deodorant and chlorine; at the way Riley’s whisper tickles his neck. He thinks of that EXO-7 suit. “Not with a broken arm,” Sam says. And then, softer, “For now.”

Riley noses behind Sam’s ear.

“You could just ask for a kiss, you know,” Sam says.

“Well, in that case.” Riley touches two fingertips to Sam’s chin, turns his head, and brings their lips to touch. That goes by slow, too.

The soundtrack of the ocean surf lends a leisure to their afternoons, their mornings, their late hours between high and low tide. Riley remembers most things, these days, but he takes his time unpacking it, keeping some things in safe dark corners and releasing others to the sea breeze.

(More than once, Sam tells him, “Take your time.”

And Riley always answers, “It's your time, too.”

"They'll get Captain America back eventually," Sam says. "I'm just looking out for you. That's part of it."

"Who's looking out for you?"

Sam is unpacking, too.)

Now, he’s learning the temperature of Riley’s tongue against his own, which direction Riley turns his head for a deeper kiss, how far his fingers fall.

A commotion, banging at the front door, plunges Sam back into the noise of reality. Riley pulls away, startled in his well-trained, icepick way.

“How did they find us?” Riley asks, his voice at least twenty degrees colder than before.

Sam holds a hand up. Wait.

Another series of raps on the front door.

Jesus, they can hear it all the way at the back of the house. Sam grabs the shield on his way, and Riley follows, a silent shadow, staking himself at the little kitchen window and peering through the blinds.

“A mailman?” Riley mutters.

Sam steels himself. Opens the door half a foot, maybe. “Can I help you?”

A thin man with even thinner hair squints up at Sam. Sure enough, he’s got a little FedEx logo on his shirt pocket. “I have a package for someone called Redwing?”

Sam’s heart pounds with relief. He smiles at the deliveryman. “That’s perfect, that’s me, thank you.”

It’s not a package, really; it’s a fat manila envelope with bubblewrap and a cluster of stamps in the corner. Riley tears it open, since he has two hands to work with. Then he hands it to Sam, who dumps the contents onto the coffee table: three old cassette tapes, a DVD, a stack of photos rubber-banded together, a roll of film, and a beat-up file folder with well-worn documents paperclipped inside. Sam checks the manila folder to see if he missed anything, and pulls out a fresh white 8 ½-by-11.

 _Hey Sam,_ it says at the top, handwritten in ballpoint pen.

“Read it to me,” Riley says, voice soft.

Sam smiles, first, before he even looks up. He smiles for all the times he’s heard Riley say it.

And then he reads the note out loud.

_Hey Sam,_

_I didn’t officially apologize before. For the record, I’m sorry about everything. Mostly for not listening to you and not trusting you. Let’s never split up again, OK?_

_Except for this vacation thing. Take all the time you need._

_Anyway, something’s been bugging me since that big empty chamber in Siberia. Misty and I did some digging. Pulled some strings. Snagged some intel out of Moscow. (I owe Romanov a favor and I’m a little nervous about it.) Here’s everything we found._

_It’s not pretty, but I thought Riley might be interested. I thought someone_ _else_ _might be interested, too, but no one’s seen him since the Battle of New York. Figured if anyone could get ahold of Steve these days, it would be Captain America._

_-Rhodey_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story was such a pleasure to write. i've wanted to showcase Sam and Riley Reyes for awhile, and i'm very happy with how this turned out, and to be able to share it now! 
> 
> again, i want to extend my deepest thanks to [sammywilsonposts](https://sammywilsonposts.tumblr.com/) and [lisainthesky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lisainthesky/pseuds/lisainthesky) for their help and additional creative efforts.
> 
> though i've been mulling over ideas for Cap!Sam and Winter Soldier!Riley for a long time, [this post](http://i-will-not-be-caged.tumblr.com/post/162571059711/writing-prompt-free-to-a-good-home) by i-will-not-be-caged is what set me into full motion. my fic was also loosely influenced by [this post](http://yeahcoolduck.tumblr.com/post/144222119516/i-was-neutral-about-zemo-but-now-i-think-he-wasnt) on tumblr.
> 
> anyway, thanks again for reading. it's been super fun :) you can also find me on [tumblr](http://queenmabscherzo.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [My Way Is Cloudy -- Playlist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12148203) by [shadychild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadychild/pseuds/shadychild)




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